9/11 Crazy Talk
Enough of the conspiracy theories, already.
Sorry, Osama did it.
At almost every progressive gathering where there's a question and answer session, someone or other vehemently raises 9/11 and espouses a grand conspiracy theory. If you haven't had the pleasure of enduring these rants, please let me share.
Here's what the conspiracists believe:
- 9/11 was an inside job.
- Members of the Bush administration ordered it, not Osama bin Laden.
- Arab hijackers may not have done the deed.
- On top of that, the Twin towers fell not because of the impact of the airplanes and the ensuing fires but because the Bush administration got agents to plant explosives at the base of those buildings.
- Building 7, another high-rise at the World Trade Center that fell on 9/11, also came down by planted explosives.
- The Pentagon was not hit by American Airlines Flight 77 but by a smaller plane or a missile.
- And the Pennsylvania plane did not crash as a result of the revolt by the passengers but was brought down by the military.
I'm amazed at how many people give credence to these theories. Everyone's an engineer. People who never even took one college science course can now hold forth at great length on how the buildings at the World Trade Center could not possibly have collapsed in the way they did and why the Pentagon could not have been struck by that American Airlines jet.
Problem is, some of the best engineers in the country have studied these questions and come up with perfectly logical, scientific explanations for what happened.
The American Society of Civil Engineers and FEMA conducted an in-depth investigation of the World Trade Center. The team members included the director of the Structural Engineering Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the senior fire investigator for the National Fire Protection Association, professors of fire safety and leaders of some of the top building design and engineering firms, including Skidmore Owings & Merrill in Chicago, Skilling Ward Magnusson Barkshire in Seattle, and Greenhorne & O'Mara in Maryland.
It concluded that massive structural damage caused by the crashing of the aircrafts into the buildings, combined with the subsequent fires, "were sufficient to induce the collapse of both structures."
The National Institute of Standards and Technology did its own 43-volume study of the Twin towers. "Some 200 technical experts...reviewed tens of thousands of documents, interviewed more than 1,000 people, reviewed 7,000 segments of video footage and 7,000 photographs, analyzed 236 pieces of steel from the wreckage [and] performed laboratory tests and sophisticated computer simulations," the institute says.
It also concluded that a combination of the crash and the subsequent fires brought the towers down: "In each tower, a different combination of impact damage and heat-weakened structural components contributed to the abrupt structural collapse."
Popular Mechanics, first in its March 2005 cover story and now in its expanded book, Debunking 9/11 Myths, after interviewing scores of other experts in the engineering field, takes apart the most popular contentions of the conspiracists. "In every case we examined, the key claims made by conspiracy theorists turned out to be mistaken, misinterpreted, or deliberately falsified," the book says.
I made a few calls myself, including to Gene Corley, who conducted the American Society of Civil Engineers/FEMA study, and to Mete Sozen, structural engineering professor at Purdue, who was one of the principal authors of "The Pentagon Building Performance Report" of January 2003, which was done under the auspices of the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Structural Engineering Institute. I also contacted engineering professors at MIT and other leading universities in the country, and none of them puts any stock in the 9/11 conspiracy theories. In fact, they view them as a huge waste of time. They are busy trying to figure out how to prevent buildings from falling in the future.
Of course, any conspiracy theorist worth his or her salt will claim that all these people are in on the plot. And that I am in on it, too.
Get over it.
Guru of paranoia
The guru of the 9/11 conspiracy movement is David Ray Griffin, an emeritus professor not of engineering but of philosophy and theology at the Claremont School of Theology. First in The New Pearl Harbor and then in The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions and now in Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11, Griffin has peddled his conspiracy theory.
He's not alone, of course. A myriad of websites devote themselves to this subject, and several films are circulating on it, including Loose Change. There's even a group called Scholars for 9/11 Truth, which insists "the World Trade Center was almost certainly brought down by controlled demolitions." Most prominent among these is Steven E. Jones, professor of physics and astronomy at Brigham Young University, whose primary field is not engineering but cold fusion, according to Debunking 9/11 Myths.
The conspiracy theories are particularly popular on the left for a couple of understandable reasons. It's undeniable that Bush has ceaselessly seized on 9/11 to justify his war-making abroad and his repressive policies at home. And then there's the notorious phrase in a document of the Project for the New American Century, the fount of neoconservativism, whose members included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and a host of other hawks who flew into the Bush administration. That line, from the September 2000 study "Rebuilding America's Defenses," argues for transforming the U.S. military posture into a much more aggressive one, and for expanding the Pentagon's budget to reach $500 billion a year. The authors recognized that this transformation would be difficult to achieve quickly "absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor."
Griffin and other left-wing conspiracy theorists put the two together, and voila. The attacks "were orchestrated in order to pave the way for launching unprovoked wars on two countries that provided no threat, whether imminent or long-term, to the people of the United States," he writes in Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11. "The administration and its Pentagon even planned to use 9/11 as a pretext...to attack still more countries. The U.S. government was planning, therefore, to use the deaths of some 3,000 people (whom itself had killed) to justify wars that would most likely kill and maim many hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps millions."
Silly stuff
Before taking some of the major conspiracy claims one by one, let's examine how outlandish the conspiracy theory is on its face.
First, Osama bin Laden has already claimed responsibility for the attack several times and boasted of the prowess of the suicide bombers who hijacked those planes. Why not take him at his word? And if bin Laden were working in cahoots with the Bush administration, why was the president warned on August 6, 2001, in a presidential daily briefing, that Osama bin Laden was about to attack the United States? Wouldn't that risk exposing the conspiracy?
Second, if the Bush administration plotters carried out 9/11 to justify attacking Iraq, why didn't they have Iraqi hijackers do the deed? In actuality, there was not a single Iraqi hijacker, and Bush propagandists had to do all sorts of gymnastics to link Iraq to the actual attackers.
Third, for this conspiracy to have succeeded, it would have had to have been amazingly vast: not only the high level members of the Bush administration (including the head of the Secret Service, Griffin says in Christian Faith) and the explosives teams, but also many others.
Griffin, in Pearl Harbor, for instance, alleges that Mayor Rudolph Giuliani may have been involved. Griffin quotes Giuliani telling ABC News, "We were operating out of there [Building 7] when we were told that the World Trade Center was gonna collapse." Griffin says Giuliani had no obvious way of knowing that, and concludes: "Giuliani's statement provides, therefore, evidence someone, perhaps he himself, knew something that the firemen in the buildings did not know -- which was perhaps that explosives had been placed in the buildings and were about to be set off." Is that really evidence? Isn't it much more likely that the firefighters told the mayor to leave because the fire itself was jeopardizing the building?
Griffin also alleges that Larry Silverstein, who leased the World Trade Center complex, was in on the deal so he could collect the insurance. (This claim -- which he might as well have called "The Jew Cashed In" -- dovetails with the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory popular in the Middle East that the Mossad blew up the towers and warned the thousands of Jews who would have been working there to stay home.)
In Pearl Harbor, Griffin quotes Silverstein in a 2002 PBS documentary recalling a conversation from the fire department commander on September 11 "telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, 'We've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.' And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse." Griffin, who writes that Silverstein "made almost $500 million in profit from the collapse of Building 7," says by "pull it" Silverstein was recommending that the building be demolished by explosives. Silverstein has flat-out denied that. By "pulling it," he has said that he meant giving up on the firefighters' efforts to save the building.
Two books later, Griffin removes any ambiguity Silverstein's "assertion that Building 7 was brought down by explosives, whatever the motive behind it, explains why and how it collapsed," in Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11. But Silverstein never made such an assertion, and for Griffin to claim he did is, to say the least, a distortion.
Where are the whistleblowers?
The problems with a vast conspiracy theory are obvious. There's the likelihood that someone along the chain would squeal. Members of the government have been engaged in far less treasonous plots (such as Bush's designs on Iran), and whistleblowers have managed to get the information out to the likes of Seymour Hersh over at The New Yorker. And, on top of that, we're supposed to believe that this incompetent administration, which brought you Katrina, was somehow able to execute this grand conspiracy?
"The government is not sufficiently competent to pull off such conspiracies and is too leaky to keep them secret," said Richard Clarke, the one-time counterterrorism czar for Clinton and Bush, in a blurb for Debunking 9/11 Myths. Clarke has been a harsh critic of Bush, and he was a strong supporter of John Kerry. Don't you think Clarke would have blown the whistle had he known? And who was in a better position than he to know?
Finally, in Pearl Harbor, Griffin acknowledges one enormous, unfillable hole in the conspiracists' theory: if Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon, where did it go? And where did all sixty-four people on board go? Griffin pathetically answers: "One cannot expect that the revisionists, being independent researchers with limited budgets and no power to subpoena testimony, could answer all the questions raised by their alternative scenario." But that doesn't stop him from speculating, in a ghoulish way, about one piece of evidence that contradicts his Flight 77 notion: the phone calls from conservative Barbara Olson, who was on Flight 77, to her husband, Ted Olson, Bush's solicitor general. Griffin casts doubt on whether the phone calls actually happened, noting that Olson "is very close to the Bush administration." At least in Pearl Harbor, Griffin recognizes the weakness of this argument. The conspiracy theorists "still need to explain, of course, what became of Barbara Olson, and also whether it is plausible that Ted Olson would have participated in a plan with that outcome," he writes. In his latest book, though, Griffin does not appear bothered in the least, as he continues to cast doubt on Ted Olson's account. He has swept Barbara Olson and sixty-three other people under the rug.
On to some of Griffin's most oft-cited questions.
Why did dust clouds shoot out of the Twin towers as they fell?
Or, as Griffin poses it in Pearl Harbor: "What other than explosives could turn concrete into powder and then eject it horizontally 150 feet or more?"
Corley, who headed up the investigation for the American Society of Civil Engineers and FEMA, gives a quick response to that. "That is simply the air pressure being pushed down," he says. "Once the collapse started, then you had roughly a 20-story building and roughly a 30-story building acting as a very large mass to push everything down. The air pressure gets quite something, and the windows on the lower floors break, and you see puffs of smoke coming out of them." Debunking 9/11 Myths offers the same explanation and cites structural engineer Jon Magnusson, who says this expulsion of air and debris is fairly common when buildings collapse.
Why did the tower that was hit second fall first?
"All other things being equal, then, the tower that was struck first should have collapsed first. And yet, although the south tower was struck seventeen minutes later than the north tower, it collapsed twenty-nine minutes earlier," writes Griffin in Pearl Harbor. The fact that the south tower fell first, he concludes, "suggests that the collapse of these buildings was caused by something other than the fires."
But all things weren't equal. "The damage done to the second building was more serious than the damage done to the first," says Corley.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology concurs. Its "Final Report on the Collapse of the World Trade Center Towers" notes that 10 core columns were severed in the south tower, whereas only six were severed in the north. And 20,000 more square feet of insulation was stripped from the trusses in the south tower than the north. The report "found no corroborating evidence for alternative hypotheses suggesting that the WTC were brought down by controlled demolition using explosives planted prior to September 11, 2001."
What about Building 7?
This is a favourite of the conspiracy theorists, since the planes did not strike this structure. But the building did sustain damage from the debris of the Twin towers. "On about a third of the face to the centre and to the bottom -- approximately 10 storeys -- about 25 per cent of the depth of the building was scooped out," Shyam Sunder, the lead investigator for the National Institute of Standards and Technology, told Popular Mechanics.
What's more, the fire in the building lasted for about eight hours, in part because there were fuel tanks in the basement and on some of the floors. "The building was designed for a fire duration of no more than about three hours," says Corley. "Eight hours was way more than what that building was designed for." (Corley, by the way, also headed up the investigation of the Murrah Building's collapse in Oklahoma City.)
The National Institute of Standards and Technology is still studying the collapse of Building 7, but its initial report says: "NIST has seen no evidence that the collapse of WTC 7 was caused by bombs, missiles or controlled demolition."
What about the Pentagon?
Conspiracy theorists will bend your ear explaining that the American Airlines Boeing 757 couldn't possibly have made such a small hole in the Pentagon. Griffin in Pearl Harbor: "The orifice created by the impact...was at most 18 feet in diameter. Is it not absurd to suggest that a Boeing 757 created and then disappeared into such a small hole?...Can anyone seriously believe that a 125-foot-wide airplane created and then went inside a hole less than 20 feet wide?"
First of all, the hole was actually 90 feet wide, according to the "Pentagon Building Performance Report" of January 2003, which the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Structural Engineering Institute put out. And Professor Sozen of Purdue, one of the authors of that report, has an explanation.
"The reinforced columns of the Pentagon destroyed the wings," says Sozen. "That's why the hole is smaller. It had to be smaller." Since working on that report, Sozen has designed simulations at Purdue, and his results correspond with what happened to Flight 77, he says. Sozen, who identifies himself as a progressive, says it is "ridiculous to deny" that the American Airlines plane hit the Pentagon. And, he adds, if Flight 77 didn't hit the Pentagon, where did it go and "what happened to the people in that plane"?
But we know what happened to them. They died at the Pentagon. "All but five of the 189 people who died on the aircraft and in the Pentagon were later identified through DNA testing," according to Debunking 9/11 Myths.
Finally, was Flight 93 shot down?
Griffin and many other conspiracists allege that Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania, was brought down not by the passengers struggling with the hijackers but by a U.S. missile. But we know from cell phone conversations that passengers on board that plane planned on confronting the hijackers. And, as Debunking 9/11 Myths notes, "a Cleveland air traffic controller assigned to Flight 93 heard signs of a struggle in the cockpit, followed shortly by screaming."
Tapes of the conversations at the northeast regional headquarters for the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) confirm this, as Michael Bronner has shown in his August article for Vanity Fair entitled "9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes." Major Kevin Nasypany was the facility's mission-crew commander that day, and the tapes show him frantically trying to figure out what was going on and whether he had orders to shoot Flight 93 down.
"Gimme the call sign," he says at 10:07. "Gimme the whole nine yards...Let's get some info, real quick. They got a bomb?"
But, as Bronner reports, by then "everyone on board is already dead. Following the passengers' counterattack, the plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania at 10:03 a.m."
The man who headed up the crash site investigation there was Matthew McCormick, a 33-year veteran at the National Transportation Safety Board. "From my investigation, there was no pre-impact stress to the airplane," he told the Debunking authors.
To be sure, there are discrepancies and omissions in The 9/11 Commission Report, and the Pentagon and FAA appear to have not been fully truthful and forthcoming about what happened that day. Not every riddle that Griffin and other conspiracists pose has a ready answer. But almost all of their major assertions are baseless. And their own theories have such gigantic holes and require such monumental leaps of logic that they discredit themselves.
At bottom, the 9/11 conspiracy theories are profoundly irrational and unscientific. It is more than passing strange that progressives, who so revere science on such issues as tobacco, stem cells, evolution and global warming, are so willing to abandon science and give in to fantasy on the subject of 9/11.
The 9/11 conspiracy theories are a cul-de-sac. They lead nowhere. And they aren't necessary to prove the venality of the Bush administration. There's plenty of that proof lying around. We don't need to make it up.
Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive where this first appeared. This article is distributed by Alternet.org. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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G West
5 years ago
Comments on "9/11 Crazy Talk"
While the article more or less reflects my own thinking on the matter, it will be interesting to see how the conspiracy buffs around here rise to the task of debunking its conclusions.
There are still lots of questions to be answered and, since the official version of events would much rather leave those stones unturned, lets sit back and see what real truths come to light. In an atmosphere where most Americans still believe that Saddam had worse weapons than the US actually used on his nation and that he had a relationship with an al Qaeda which itself is more a 'virtual' entity than a real one how can anyone be surprised that there are a plethora of 'theories' to explain 9/11?
Crazy talk indeed!
verso
5 years ago
I agree with Gwest above and the general thrust of the article. However, I think there is still lots we don't know, so I'm not willing to completely buy into the "official" versions of events.
The US administration's reluctance to release classified information on some of the above, plus it's underfunding and lack of cooperation with the 9/11 Commission is a big reason why there are so many conspiracies surrounding that day.
Coyote
5 years ago
Me three. I "generally" take events as they have unfolded at "more or less" face value. Though it does have to be said that the "conspiracy theorists" par excellent, with the greater intentional lies, such as the view of Saddam indicated by GWest, of far greater certainty reside in the White House.
And the evidence of the degree to which the US strayed from the real evidence of 9/11, considering that the main soldiers of Al Qaeda who brought down the twin towers mainly came, in fact, from Saudi Arabia (from which Al Qaeda has largely also been bankrolled, and first attacked Afghanistan and thereafter Iraq, certainly indicates that a real enough attack on Amerika was used as the covering pretext for a widespread "imperialist adventure" to control the entire Middle East. And I haven't yet even raised the issue of the long history of US Empire interference in the Middle East, especially through its Zionist proxy in Palestine. which is the justification for the attack from the view of the Middle East Resistance. (That's a history which Amerika and we, apologists for that, also work mightily to ignore or belittle in our "official" conspiracy theory.)
And even all that said, given the manipulations of rationales, ideological realities and the nature of the inter-acting events on the part of the US Empire, it is certainly true that we do not yet know the entire truth. We may not for very many years yet, in fact. So neither am I prepared yet to entirely pooh pooh any or all of these conspiracy theories, so-called, until there is a more independent and future historical examination of the full realities. For we know too that none are further off the mark than the official Washington explanations either-, and that's for sure.
We are in a place still, no doubt, where rumours and conspiracy theories are naturally to be found and flourish alongside what may yet be determined to be the full truth. Which is not yet known satisfactorily, or fully, in my view either. And these conspiracy theories, and outright lies, flourish not only amongst the street, but US and even Canadian officialdom as well spreads yet its own false "conspiracy theories".
And many as well, here and elsewhere, certainly in the United States, incredulously believe them, and base their action or inaction around them-, such as the average US Empire foot-soldier in Iraq, who themselves believe Iraq played a role in the events of 9/11, along with the majority of the US populace. Victim of his own conspiracy theory spreading and outright lying government. Ditto "official" lying Canada and its naive troops on the ground in Afghanistan.
climber
5 years ago
Rothschild, what kind of name is that? And then he pooh poohs the Mossad link and Silversteins involvement, what do you expect? I am joking of course, but it is easy to see how these balls get rolling, seeing as we have been lied to so many fuking times its little wonder.
apathysux
5 years ago
Out of curiosity..can anyone explain why Osama binLaden hasn't actually been charged by the FBI for the attack, as he has been indicted for other attacks? Why would the FBI say they do not have any hard evidence against him? To me this says that any group or organization could have paid the Arabs to pull this off.
I am not saying I agree with the bombs under the towers theory but I do believe there could have been an Amerikkkan backer to the plot. Why not the CIA? Look what Timothy McVeigh accomplished.
In my opinion..there could possibly be and most likey would have been some collusion... anyone remember the Iran-Contra Affair perchance??
The writer above quickly sites the group Scholars for 9/11 Truth but does not really speak to any of the other 73 members credentials. While you're researching their credentials, why don't you check into the info regarding a North American Union and we can begin calculating how much longer Canada can maintain it's soveriegnty under the current adminstration.
BTW anyone know where they bury 'whistleblowers'?
apathysux
5 years ago
Oh yeah... re: Osama bin Laden's taped confessions...anyone here speak the language...or should we all buy the interpretation from a White House stacked on lies or better yet, the paid-to-follow the party line 6 o'clock news???
Maybe...as has been commented on by others...we never get the real truth from the ones who should be telling it...so... I say...QUESTION EVERYTHING.
steveleenow
5 years ago
they hit the nail in the head in the middle of the article - we know this didn't happen because it worked.
When was the last time any government actually did something that worked?
alive
5 years ago
.
Good point!
Of course our daily news does include; "Your world in 60 seconds", so anything happening in the world will be explained then
nightbloom
5 years ago
Good grief - who needs friends with critics like this (from the U.S. perspective) - Has this man gone mad? He had an excellent chance to follow-up the U.S. and Iran presidents on the rostra at the UN General Assembly today, and he decides to ad lib...?? Someone call Oprah and let her know her book club has serious competition from Venezuela's presidentcy.
http://www.drudgereport.com/flash2.htm
I mean Bush is dumb - no doubts there. But now Chavez here - What a breathtaking idiot.
Avicenna
5 years ago
Aside from engineering arguments (which I have heard go both ways with varying number of "expert" reports - though have yet to read a peer-reviewed analysis), there are glaring gaps in the way the whole 9-1-1 scenario ominously went down - even the numerical date itself. Such symbolism is wacky enough for the people plagued with consistency only in a "failure of American intelligence" as a root cause for this rather diabolical - but ingenious - execution. I don't understand the rationale behind the continuous lying from the authors of a Project of a New America. Why on earth would they (Bushites) change even the EPA's initial assessment that the air was clean and people could return to work following the wreckage when it was obvious to even "non experts" that the asbestos and noxious fumes weren't for human consumption? Whose payroll is Osama on, and how does he manage to get an MTV crew following hime through caves in Afghanistan while hooked up on a dialysis machine leaving little cryptic notices like a freakin' video game? Truth is stranger than fiction - any way you roll this out. Osama's gang has been recruited before by the American gov't to do what they do best - those "brave soldiers of god" - and I've yet to see proof that they weren't aided and abetted that fateful day that rings in our lexicon as 911 (doesn't mean much to an Arab - but to any american - it is an s.o.s). I've learned that it neither extreme that holds the answer - it lies (no pun intended) somewhere in the middle.
verso
5 years ago
"Of course our daily news does include; "Your world in 60 seconds", so anything happening in the world will be explained then"
Good call... As far as I can, a typical "news" hour on Global breaks down something like this: 60 seconds for "our world", about 15 minutes of local/national news (fires, car crashes, shootings, a politics gloss over, etc...) 10 minutes of sports, 5-10 minutes weather, 5-10 minutes health, fill in the rest with celebrity crap, maybe a car review and some inane banter between anchors and you pretty much have a typical news hour... and we wonder why people aren't engaged in political or world issues?
Coyote
5 years ago
Amen to that. Even this article.
And amen to that as well. Better not to pooh pooh everything just yet, and stay tuned. There's more than an ounce of treachery possible here, coming out of all sides.
Not to forget, historically, Osama, and the Taliban for that matter, were the horses Amerika helped create and backed, armed, financed and supplied with arms, and helped set up over Afghanistan in the first place.
Strange truths indeed.
Whatever known truth, or possible "conspiracy theory" you choose to ascribe to, they all point to the same real villain in the piece. They are themselves a conspiracy: the US Empire.
Conspiracies exist. We live alongside it, and it rules us through the Harper government.
Truth stranger than any fiction.
Like I say, I'm not prepared to pooh pooh anything just yet, based on what I do know.
Coyote
5 years ago
And right fuggin' on, President Chavez of Venezuala!
The smell of sulphur is in the air even here. :-) (I cross myself.)
Truman Green
5 years ago
Nightbloom, thanks for posting Chavez's speech.
Can you quote me a paragraph which would lead you to your conclusion that he is an "idiot?"
And while you're doing that can you also let us know why you think Bush is dumb.
I don't think Bush is dumb. I think he's rotten to the core, but I don't think he's dumb.
Actually, nightbloom, I sincerely believe that you're dumb if you think Chavez is an idiot and Bush is dumb.
These are both very capable men.
I think this is important because, strangely, I keep reading comments which claim that Bush is too dumb to do a conspiracy like 911, and to these people I'd recommend the possibility that a conspiracy can be delegated, eh.
Truman Green
5 years ago
As a matter of fact, Bush is a very smart man. I've watched him on tv many times, telling one lie after another, precisely tuned and honed to impress gullible, silly people, which is the trademark aptitude of a brilliant demagogue.
nightbloom
5 years ago
It's stupid that he blew the perfect opportunity to make his case. A lot of people are sympathetic to a few key arguments (widening the Security Council membership, etc). But he's made it harder for them to publicly endorse him by acting like he's in grade 3. Reports are there was laughter and giggles from the General Assembly throughout his speech.
Whomever is handling his communications should be fired. He wasted an opportunity, irrespective of the smattering of good points.
And this is the first book endorsement to come from the rostra of the General Assembly. This would be funny if it weren't so disappointing.
Aren't you disappointed? Chavez acted like a silly agitator, not a "great man" of the political Left (which he might have been).
Truman Green
5 years ago
I liked his speech. He said what he came to say. His courage is breathtaking, even after being kidnapped and threatened with death.
And he did make his case:
He invited nations to support him in Venezuela's bid for a seat on the security council; he pointed out that America is, as usual, acting only in its own interests; he invited nations to join him in the non-aligned movement; he identified the US as a grave danger to the world because of its imperialistic tendencies.
So what opportunity did he miss?
Machael Ignatieff, he ain't. Which reminds me of another grave danger sneaking up on Canada, currently slightly ahead of Bob Rae.
Coyote
5 years ago
Not me. I thought it was a great, spot on speech, that most ordinary folks around the world would immediately agree with.
Besides, we've got too many goddamn so-called "great men" characterized as "great statesmen", really system apologists and collaborators with the status quo, already. The world needs more real men with chutzpah, who say it like it is, and fewer steeped in timidity, or bullshitt and mannered artifice-, designed to hide their selfish treachery.
And echoing Truman, thanks for posting this "great man's" speech. :-)
thedubc
5 years ago
In my opinion, the question here is not really one of conspiracy as it is one of complicity. Did Osama fund & plan the 9/11 attacks? probably. Did the US Administration know that the attacks were planned, yet did nothing about it because they saw it as a way to advance their plans for the "Project for the New American Century"? Most likely.
We hear about the 3500 people who lost their lives on 9/11, but never about the thousands who have died or been tortured since then by the hands of the US Adminisration and their foreign policy. Pulling your country into a constant state of war with an ephemeral enemy - the terrorists - makes for easy control of power and a path to milk your country of it's riches. Then, you pull other countries into the 'coalition' to get blood on their hands so yours don't look so bad.
The Brothers Grimm should be so prolific.
Frank
5 years ago
Losing Sweden the other day was a blow but on the bright side the neo-Nazis won some seats in Mecklenberg.
Their leader said
(By "red-red" we assume he means Christian-Democrat (Conservative), Angela Merkel)
In related news the radio station at Gleiwitz has been broadcasting a message for Poles to attack Germans and nobody can find Mr Honiok. Meanwhile a Mr Churchill in England has noticed the lamps on his block going out. Hmmm
alive
5 years ago
thanks to Nana for posting this long video:
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?do...190071483512003
Showing the case for sucpecting that greed and cover-ups were part of the reason the towers were BLOWN UP!
it is a long video, but it may just convince you that this is not another UFO story
Avicenna
5 years ago
I thought Chavez was a riot - though he has a ways to go to reach the idolic status of Colbert in my mind. The only thing in his speech that stretched credibility is the idea that Bush has a vocubulary that can conceive the acrobots of Chomsky's linguistics. Is there a picture book version by any chance?
PS - I've be AWOL for a bit - but I'm thrilled to see the howling coyote is back biting - I mean biting back...
Coyote
5 years ago
You hussle your buns back here pronto. We need you. :-)
Mel from Calgary
5 years ago
Looking at the photos of the pentagon after 11 Sept I would say there is no evidence a 757 crashed into it. Where is the debris? This was a very large plane there should be shredded aluminium everywhere. There isn't.
There is saturation coverage of the two planes in the World Trade Centre and the one in Pennsylvania.
There was no plane. The part of the Pentagon damaged was under renovation so there were very few people even near it. I envision blowing it up and inventing the names of a few people who "died" to make it look like washington was a target.
Jack's
5 years ago
I found this on an American blog and it reflects my thinking - although I am no fan of the U.S.
9/11 plot reasoning has developed from Bush's aggressiveness and his outright dishonesty with the people. His 'evil country' accusations should include America.
The Israeli favoured American media is even more complicit.
apathysux
5 years ago
Just read Chavez's speech. I too thought it was spot on. it may read a bit funny but that is the price a language pays when interpreted into another language. I personally like his euphemism for Bush altho i think the devil is smarter. I'm not entirely sure George W. Bush JR is very smart but his Daddy sure as heck is! There's one fella who could not only be guiding the son but could definitely fit Truman's description of Junior. Sociopaths of the worst kind, both of'em!
no1important
5 years ago
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7143212690219513043&q=911+Mysteries+-+Demolitions
All governments lie, the US government lied about Roswell, landing on the moon, the Kennedy assassination, torture, about reasons going into Iraq etc. so really anything they say you have to take with a grain of salt.
nightbloom
5 years ago
Like Pope Benedict, you mean.
I'm still trying to contain my nausea over today's NYT editorial. I can't believe they had the gall the write such a blatant capitulation to politically expedient untruth.
Umslopogaas
5 years ago
Follow the money.
Who purchased all the puts on the airline stocks and why is this not public information?
That is the person (group) who knew what was about to happen and toppled the towers.
Funny how that has never been revealed.
lynn
5 years ago
Not in the way you are assuming, nightbloom. They were more about a sense of nervous release.... from some of the more overlooked nations of the world...finally hearing spoken out loud what thay had been holding in for so long. And now the bad boy in class with the big heart was courageously speaking out for all of them...and he was doing it with a sense of flair and irreverent humour that immediately levelled the UN playing field as he poked fun (crossing himself from the fumes of sulphur) at the dictatorial US bully that doesn't like to be poked at...and dares anyone to try....doesn't like to answer for anything ...and dares anyone to question.... and that self-righteously assumes it is The Owner of The World.
No, this was a brilliant speech..wise in the way the Fool in Shakespeare's plays is always the least fooled by the pageantry of corruption, and neither impressed nor bowed by it...and wherein the simple truth of the words he speaks strips bare the falsity of kings and queens:
"Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world. Truly. As the owner of the world.
I think we could call a psychiatrist to analyze yesterday's statement made by the president of the United States. As the spokesman of imperialism, he came to share his nostrums, to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world.
An Alfred Hitchcock movie could use it as a scenario. I would even propose a title: "The Devil's Recipe."
As Chomsky says here, clearly and in depth, the American empire is doing all it can to consolidate its system of domination. And we cannot allow them to do that. We cannot allow world dictatorship to be consolidated."
And you know, there isn't a better meatphor for what this world needs...as Chavez asks: Is there a psychiatrist in the (UN) house?... because really, the policies of the US and its current president are clearly insane...and Bush is actually proposing these policies to the UN... policies of war, domination, exploitation, and the pillaging of the peoples of this world, in the name of peace at a world institution supposedly serving peace.
Now isn't that the ultimate definition of insanity?
Truman Green
5 years ago
I guess I might as well go ahead (as I always do on similar threads) and recommend that anyone who hasn't heard about 'Operation Northwoods,'consider spending some time going through it.
The Reichstag fire, Maine exploding, starting the Spanish American War, (Havana harbour), The Gulf of Tonkin non-incident (in which LBJ lied through his teeth about N. Vietnam attacking some American ships, and Colin Powell's disgusting speech at the UN, are instructive, too.
Also interesting is the percentage of Rothschild's essay which is reserved for mocking and belittling people who have trouble with the official versions of 911, instead of the controversy at hand.
Seems downright Dershowitzian to me.
And let us not be swayed by such as: (kidding with the phrasing)
"911 Crazy Talk," or "Enough of the conspiracy theories already," and:
"if you haven't had the pleasure of enduring these rants, please let me share," or:
"I'm amazed at how many people give credence to these theories. Everyone's an engineer. People who never even took one college science course can now hold forth at great length on how the building at the WTC could not possibly have collapsed..."
Well, Mr. Rothschild, as a 19 year old student I figured out that everything Dean Rusk and Lynden Johnson said about why America was invading Vietnam was a lie. In fact, if they'd phoned me up for advice, I could have saved 4 or 5 million lives--which were lost for NOTHING.
And imagine...I hadn't taken a single course in political science--and certainly not engineering.
So smarten up, Rothschild! This is not a joke!
And I hope that readers will understand that Mr. Rothschild's essay can not really be taken seriously.
He's just obstructing the controversy.
Booker
5 years ago
Just because Bush is a scoundrel, a liar, and a fanatic, doesn't mean he planned the 9/11 attacks. As awful as his administration is we can't blame everything bad in the world on him, and if he'd tried to plan the 9/11 attacks on New York, he would have hit Chicago by mistake. He's not a good enough actor to fake that stunned look on his face as he held his copy of "My Pet Goat".
All of the "evidence" (often contradictory) presented by the conspiracy theologians has been refuted ably elswhere. Can we move on now to discuss the crimes that are real?
If you want to read another critique from the left, Alexander Cockburn provides it here http://counterpunch.org/cockburn09092006.html
lynn
5 years ago
..should be "metaphor" above but hey I kinda like meatphor.. anyway, if Truman can create "Dershowitzian"... btw I like that one, Truman ;-)...may borrow it some time.
Grumpy
5 years ago
Interesting, on two PBS programs last week,was mentioned a curious event during 9/11.
The Americans thought there was also going to be a nuclear attack! That's why Bush was rushed off to a bunker. Evidently a Russian 'suitcase nuke' (is there such a thing?) was reported;y smuggled into the USA. The report was later corrected.
Like the Kennedy assasination, there are mant events leading uo to 9/11 will never be told!
The brain
5 years ago
9/11 was an inside job.
Members of the Bush administration ordered it, not Osama bin Laden. - Rothchild
So far, so good. This is the meat and potatoes of it, with Osama, former CIA agent and government payroller carrying it out.
That's entirely false
This is false as well. We all saw the planes hit wtc1 and 2, we saw the buildings go down from the top down. Controlled demolishions create buildings that fall from the first and second floors on up.
As mentioned, the building collapsed from the bottom first and second floors on up. Not beginning from the bottom third to half of the building, but the bottom first and second floors... like a controlled demolishion.
Does a controlled demo matter on wtc7 concerning whether or not there was a 911 conspiracy or one can be proven? Absolutely not. The reality is that this building was most likely taken down for an insurance fraud and had nothing to do with the real reason behind 911. I haven't looked fully into what wtc7 held exactly, or what the impacts of wtc7 going down would be on the markets entirely, but to me it looks like insurance fraud and possible market manipulation, and is unlikely related to the other events of 911, coming after the fact.
Most conspiracy theorists don't put much weight on this one. Bush's involvement with the Bin Ladins is more than enough.
False. Conspiracy theorists in general have the common sense to know that it was likely hijackers that took this plane down.
All in all, for me, it only takes knowing that Osama Bin Laden worked for the CIA in the 80's and 90's under GWB senior, that the Bush's and the Bin Ladens knew each other well, that GWB used this to invade Iraq and spend trillions in military spending which is where the real fingerpointing should lie. And what does it for me in spades? Bush and Cheney made billions off of profiteering from war. Enough said.
And finally this. America's most wanted man has been walking around alive for the past 5 years. With all of their tech and intel, and bounties, they can't catch Bin Ladin? Doesn't this hint to something? Guru of paranoia... how about the guru of fear, GW Bush? and whistleblowers? Who besides the Bush family needed to know what the Bush's and Bin Ladins were up to? The answer? No one else needed to know. No whistle blowers found when there's no one to blow a whistle. I take it, Matthew Rothchild, you vote for the Bush loving Conservatives in this country?
macsasquatch
5 years ago
One thing that strikes me about this conspiracy controversy is that all kinds of people can imagine a conspiracy by a bunch of religious hermits in their caves and wikiups in the outback of Afghanistan coming up with aconspiracy to threaten all Western Civilization, but those same people are unable to imagine a conspiracy by the most powerful men on the planet.
Here's what struck me as I bounced from channel to channel Sept 11 in 2001.
The spokespersons for USA immediately started calling it a act of war.
I remembered that when the Oklahoma bombing happened a few years before, there was a grumbly anti Arab feeling about that one for the 36 hours or so until the FBI said that the perps were local. So I thought it precipitous for the USA's leaders to immediately call what was happening to their towers an act of war. At the time it struck me that even if it were foreign terrorists, it was certainly a job for international police work, not military action. I wondered at the time what would happen if they caught anyone responsible. If they called it a crime, there would be due process, and the trial(s) would reveal what was going on. But if they called it a war, then the captives would be prisoners of war, and immune from investigation and so on, and we'd never find out anything about their motives.
(Well, as it turned out, the USA gvt. came up with a way to skate between those two options.)
After I had figured out the timing of the Flight #93, I looked at my maps, and then, about four weeks later, had a look at the Newsweek and Time mags and what they said about #93.
I figure that by the time that plane made a left over Cleveland, the military knew what was up-at least with that plane. So once they could see that it was heading for Washington,(and Ari Fleischer said that day on tv that they knew it was heading for Washington) they could see that it would be over heavily populated territory of Ohio and the Pittsburgh area of Penn. Then, just before it got to the heavier population of Washington metro, it passed lightly populated Penn and the part of Maryland where Camp David is. Camp David would be protected with ground to airs, just like the White House. So why not take it down with a Camp David ground to air whle it was over lightly populated territory! I cannot believe the military decided to leave it all up to the passengers to handle.
(Altho, now that they have made a movie of it, I guess the Davy Crockett story about the passengers is carved in stone...er, celluloid)
I'll just mention as well the hijacker passport the investigators found on the rubble. I'm not sure how they knew it was on a hijacker rather than on an ordinary passenger...racial profile, I guess. But that passport survived temperatures that brought down the tower, survived the crash and chaos of the crumbling edifice, and landed, readable, on top of that rubble.
I want the material that that passport was made of the next time I reshingle my roof.
RickW
5 years ago
With this kind of "track record", it is only right that the United States be questioned at evey turn:
http://www.henryholt.com/holt/overthrow.htm
The buggers (in charge) cannot be trusted.
Booker
5 years ago
Macsasquatch, many of those "hermits" have advanced university degrees and are as smart as any of us. It seems a little condescending to say they are too backward to successfully launch attacks on the U.S.
macsasquatch
5 years ago
Booker...try to concentrate on the point...do you think that the most powerful men on the planet can come up with a conspiracy that is inimical to democracy, rule of law, decency and the expectations of civilized behaviour?
You want to make a quibble out of the connotation of 'hermit'? seems a bit of a red herring to me.
cosmo
5 years ago
I agree that Osama brought down the towers.
However, there is a question of whether there may have been prior knowledge of something.
Like macsasquatch, I noticed that George bush uses the phrase "war on terror" in the very first speech after Sept. 11.
cosmo
5 years ago
Whoops. I checked again, and he actually says "war on terrorism". But he enunciates it as though it's already intended to be a catchphrase.
nightbloom
5 years ago
Sounds like you were actually there, Lynn! Which delegation were you with?
alive
5 years ago
brain???
watch this video and eat your words:
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?do...190071483512003
The brain
5 years ago
macsasquatch:
Personally, I liked your point. Anyone who thinks the U.S., particularly this current administration hasn't got the wherewithall, motive or intelligence to do something like this lives life with blinders on. They have more than enough potential (and greed) to pull it off.
solipsist
5 years ago
It amuses, amazes, infuriates and depresses me when some folks go on about conspiracy theories, and brush off the theorists as left-wing lunatics with tin-foil hats. There have been many conspiracies - as mentioned above - Gulf of Tonkin, USS Maine, Operation North Woods, Pearl Harbour, and on and on. The problem, as I see it, is that people do not want to/ can't believe that their governments, and the captains of industry (increasingly hard to differentiate) do not neccessarily have their best interests in mind.
My wife woke me up on Sept.11, 2001 with the words "It's happening. The shit is hitting the fan". What was happening was everything that I have said for years (and was ridiculed and called a conspiracy theorist), was coming about. I have since studied everything that I could find from all sources. I have watched slow-motion video, read technical reports, eye-witness accounts, seismic graphs, history, and on and on.
The WTC buildings were engineered to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707. The 757 is not such a different aircraft.
No steel-framed sky scraper in history has collapsed from fire. Some have burned for days without collapse.
The temperature of burning jet fuel is only half of that required to melt steel.
Watching the "collapse" in slow motion, one can see the squibs blowing off sequentially - as in a controlled demolition. These are not windows blowing out from air pressure.
The fire fighters at the higher levels were recorded sayimg that the fires were almost out.
OBL actually said that he didn't do it
I could go on for hours - the whole thing stinks to high heaven.
The brain
5 years ago
Your link video is coming up unavailable, alive. By the way, I've seen three amateur vid clips from 3 different angles and posted the link. The collapse began on the first, second floors with one clip in three, the lowest floors were obscured from the other two views in the other two vid clips of wtc7 becuase there were buildings in the way, but it was a bottom up collapse of wtc7 for sure, on all three.
snert
5 years ago
What a wasted arguement. Black is white! No it's not, white is black.
The brain
5 years ago
What about World Trade Center 7?
Few people have studied WTC7 in any great detail and cannot offer any theories on its collapse mechanism. In the chaos of the day, little attention was paid to WTC7, so there is less evidence available on the damage it sustained before it collapsed. However, some questions that we may want to ponder ...
* While it did not receive any direct impact form the planes, how much debris hit at as the main towers collapsed and what damage did it cause?
* To what extent (if any) did the shock or vibrations caused by the collapse of WTC1 & 2 affect the integrity of WTC7?
* Did any unseen damage to the WTC7 foundations occur in the collapse of WTC 1 & 2?
* Did any of the fire suppression systems in WTC7 function?
None of these questions where officially asked by the Bush administration after 911.
IAMC
5 years ago
I would encourage all to view The Popular Mechanics explanations to some of your burning questions.
I, for one don't care about anything but preventing extremists from killing my family. Just like Helter Skelter. We don't want murderous zealots getting nuclear weapons.
It doesn't make sense to me that Iran would need to develop nuclear energy when they are awash in oil. Can anyone explain that to me?.
These extremists are very good at dividing their opposition, and we are too stupid and politically correct to respond with the indignation that we should.
I have had liberals ay to me, that as long as these enemies only have suicide bombers and TNT, they can't win, so why worry about it.
I say to them, that, I am not looking forward to the extremists consequences, while they attempt to try this attempt to kill us with sub satndard means. I sure as hell don't want them to get nuclear weapons.
We should be aware of the posters on this site that are abetting these terrorist extremists. I won't mention any names Chomsky blowers.
G West
5 years ago
How true Ron. Several countries governed by murderous zealots already have nuclear weapons and that puts all of us in very great danger. You get them, especially the U.S. to forgo its nuclear hegemony and I'll shake your hand.
On the other hand, Iran says they need nuclear power. Why shouldn't they have the right to have it. The U. S. never asked permission to built its reactors - or did you miss that.
Are you feeling threatened Ron?
IAMC
5 years ago
Who has nuclear weapon? Russia, United States, France? I don't think Israel has nuclear weapons on site, but they certainly have them by proxy.
I'm sure there can't be very many nuclear weapons manufacturers operating in the world today.
But there are some. I hope they are working for western democracy.
Clear Cut
5 years ago
Thank you Matthew Rothschild for this informative article. I couldn't agree more that we need to stop questioning the official version of what happened on 9/11.
Rothschild has analyzed official 9/11 reports, examined expert testimony and otherwise thoroughly researched this subject, and reaches the inescapable conclusion that the US Government has provided us with the truth regarding this matter.
The malcontents that think otherwise are really grasping at straws if they would even consider that the world's only true democracy would mislead the public, engage in covert operations, or use their military for nefarious means.
And it's certainly time someone put Dr. David Griffin and Dr. Steven Jones in their place. They are not engineers yet they have the audacity to think that just because they have analyzed official 9/11 reports, examined expert testimony and otherwise thoroughly researched this subject, they are qualified to give lectures and write articles about this subject.
Rothschild points out that Bin Laden has already claimed responsibility for these attacks. Isn't it time we just believed him? Sure, sticklers will point out that he initially made a statement that he had nothing to do with it. We'll probably never know the details surrounding this statement but it's most likely the product of the liberal media taking something he said out of context.
Videotape released a few weeks later that was used to justify the war in Afghanistan is a far better indicator of Osama's position. Here he is seen incontrovertibly telling the truth: he's relaxed, looking his best after just having had a facial makeover, wearing his finest jewelry and finally, by the way, having the good sense to use his proper hand for writing. (I can't believe he used to use his left hand - it's a wonder any of the of the international terrorist cells he leads can ever read his orders.)
There are anti-Semites who will throw accusations at Silverstein. He's simply a good businessman with the impeccable timing necessary to know when to suddenly re-insure his property against terrorist acts.
And we all know air pressure can vapourize buildings and flight recorder black boxes. If explosives were detonated, as the nutty conspiracy theorists suggest, they certainly would have destroyed the terrorists' passports. Luckily the air pressure, after vapourizing the buildings and black boxes, produced updrafts that allowed the passports to fall safely to the ground on top of the rubble.
It's so obvious that a terrorist pilot performed a downward spiral landing that ended in a direct hit of the Pentagon that the government decided it wasn't even necessary to release security tapes that showed the incident.
If only the pilot would have employed his skill for good instead of evil he might have volunteered for the US Air Force where he could have used his expertise to shoot down hijacked planes.
Lefty
5 years ago
Osama said he didn't do it
godsChild
5 years ago
Great article.
Nothing else I've read lately demonstrates "the soft left" as much as this idiots scribbling.
I can call him an idiot because as any mildly informed individual knows, trusting *any* information coming from American governmental scientific sources is an exercise in pure propaganda.
From "scientific decrees" stating that abortions cause breast cancer to the blatant and continuing push of global warming denial, any scientist working for the American government publishes what the American administration wants to be published.
They either tow the line or else.
Next time this jackass wants to write something for his kindergarten class, maybe he can call up the EPA for some "facts" - the same gang of Bullsh***er's that stated the air quality was safe after the WTC buildings were demolished via explosives.
This "journalist" is an idiot, though I'm sure someone, somewhere appreciates that he swallows.
nightbloom
5 years ago
Has this man flipped his lid, or what.
Chavez flees NYC
http://www.drudgereport.com/flash.htm
G West
5 years ago
sez Ron/IAMC.
You might want to read this story from the
TELEGRAPH from 2001 and learn about Mordechai Vanunu before you tell your friends on coffee row that Isreal has no nukes primed and 'ready to go'. And has had for years since, wait for it, France helped develop their program decades ago.
G West
5 years ago
Here's the link Ron, it you actually want to learn something instead of just posting nonsense:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/12/23/wnuke23.xml
Apologies for misspelling Israel above.
macsasquatch
5 years ago
IAMC,here is one possibility for Iran's nuke energy efforts.They do have oil, but their economy, and its outlook are such that they would like to export more of their oil. The nuke produced electricity would be for domestic consumption.
Sometimes, when I mull over the extent to which the Bush regime was involved in the WTC/Pentagon attacks I think of Lenin and his Bolsheviks. One take on Lenin and his Bolshies was that they might not have brought about the crises in 1917-1918 Russia, but they sure as heck were ready ot take advantage of their opportunities.
Likewise, Bush regime was opportunistic in using the events to twist the national agenda their way.
The anthrax murders seemed to help them a lot as well. (Funny how that one faded once the sources got close to officialdom)
As for Osama, I remember that the Taliban gvt in Afghanistan said that they would not turn over Osama because he said that he did not do it, and they wanted some evidence from USA...the evidence was not forthcoming.
(I guess it was the 'secret' evidence that GWB was shopping around to potental allies-including our gvt- to justify attacking Afghnanistan.)
Shortly after the attack came the info from the UK foreign affice that the USA had sent a note to the Taliban vias the Pakistan gvt in July of 2001 that they ought to turn over Osama to the USA or face a military action.
A Pakistan source reported that Osama offered to turn himself over, not to the USA, but to an international tribunal to plead his innocence, but Musharref said that Pakistan could not give him the security. Source suggested USA was behind Musharref's declining Osama's offer.
Murky times, this scramble for Central Asia...murky times!
(Of course, heck of a lot easier to just go the Islamophobe route and declare it all a battle between good and evil.)
Booker
5 years ago
It was your point, not mine. It seems to me that behind all the "Bush must have done it" talk there's a feeling that the attack was so spectacular and so successful that it could only have been done by one of us.
So anyway, which scenario is more likely:
a group of guerrillas who think the U.S. is their mortal enemy and who have attacked U.S. personel repeatedly for years, including a previous attack on the WTC, attack the WTC again, only this time they hit the buildings in the right place.
or
a group of uber-capitalist, super-patriotic politians would attack the world headquarters of capitalism,in America, as well as their beloved Pentagon, killing thousands of their friends (and money managers) in order to create an excuse to invade Iraq?
Use Ockham's Razor.
This is not to say that Bush didn't take advantage of the whole situation for partisan political purposes -- that's the only thing the man can do well!
Working Man
5 years ago
It is interesting how many of these nutty conspiracy theories I see repeated here. Good thing these kinds of nuts never rarely form any kind of government.
And you know what? I saw those planes hit the towers live on TV with my own eyes, when nobody realised what was going on.
The left has to realise that until it can get its lunatic fringe under control it cannot form governments. As much as I dislike Bush and company, I have do admit they run an awesome election machine. One that wins elections,
Jack's
5 years ago
Godschild wrote..
Good comment - and I tend to agree with the "scientific sources" scenario...
Gerhardius
5 years ago
Israel has its own nuclear deterent in place and production of Israeli nukes is undertaken at Dimona in the Negev Desert. The Israeli bomb owes the bulk of its existence to French support, as well as espionage and theft. The basic info on Dimona is here http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/israel/dimona.htm
Clear Cut
5 years ago
I'm with you Working Man. Debating these lunatic theories only gives them credibility. And this isn't really the time or place for reasoned discussion anyway - no one has time for that. We're busy people we working men - it's much better to just cut to the chase and weigh in with a strong opinion.
These whiners should accept the truth of the official 9/11 commission and move on to something useful. Building an awesome election machine, as you mention, would be a good start. It won't be easy, though - the impressive machine Bush put together was not even a match for the usually-infallible exit polls.
jwstewart
5 years ago
Regarding the Hugo Chavez speech, I'm unclear on the significance of the sulfur smell. Is there some hidden meaining there ?
Also, I just finished reading "Confessions of an Econimoc Hitman", which offers a significant amount of "proof" that Mr. Chavez is on the right track.
In considering together both Mr. Chavez' assertion of imperial hegmony by the USA and the 9/11 attacks, why is it so hard to beleive OBL hates the US and actually carried out the attacks ?
Coyote
5 years ago
Ahmadinejad has been giving an interview to the UN press corp today, of which CNN and its affiliate CBC have been carrying snippets (whilst we have to listen to Bush, The Owner of The World's rants in their entirety. What I'm hearing though I basically agree with-, along with Chavez.
If anyone comes across a link to the complete interview with the Iranian President, it would be of some use to our discussions here. (To not get if filtered through US censorship.)
And don't give me the old yada yada about "free press". The entire Middle East accesses European and North American TV by satellite all the time, daily. The average Iranians no doubt understands our politics far better than we do theirs. (Ahmidinejad even let it drop that he had offered Bush a weekly half hour on Iranian TV to say whatever he wants, while being interviewed by Anderson Cooper on CNN last night-, again censored into mere snippets along with "commentary" rather than letting us see the interview in its entirety, and let Ahmidinejad's words speak for themselves.) Free Press, my ass.
Bush needs to take up Ahmidinejad's offer to a public debate in the world's public media, and before the entire world-, and let the world's public decide for themselves.
US democracy, my ass.
Pixelpump
5 years ago
This article was a weak response to a very important issue.
Matthew Rothschild's view reflects exactly why the democrats will continue to lose elections, and why the United States will continue to slide towards dictatorship.
A Zogby poll from this summer shows mainstream opinion 42 percent against the official story, claiming deliberate cover-up. Ten percent are undecided. This is despite the ridicule these views receive from the likes of Mr. Rothschild and the mainstream press.
The democrat status quo yet again believes they can gain power by glowing in the pyre light of the republican party. They will once again fail.
Electronic Elections are a few weeks away and once again the Dems will lose. Don't mention the hacked Diebold voting machines though, people might think you are some kind of conspiracy theorist.
alive
5 years ago
b?r?a?i?n?
what exactly are you saying?
If you agree with that,please explain why a hit on the top causes the bottom to explode?
Too bad the video was pulled, guess who decided this was not good for the public to see?
Also explain how large steel chunks (the size of those airplanes)from the floors would fly 400 feet and imbed in other buildings?
I saw huge steelgirders bent and twisted, but NOT cracked, that takes much more heat than any jetfuel fire can provide!
It is cetain that nothing would cause fires to burn in the basement for weeks, except if there had been hightemperature detonations there.
Yes too bad that video was pulled!
Nana
5 years ago
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-6708190071483512003http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-6708190071483512003
9/11 Mysteries (Full Length, High Quality)
Try this. I think the other link posted was for the full version of Aaron Russo's film, which has been pulled.
Coyote
5 years ago
And what goddamn leftwinger here cares a twaddle about what a neoconservative nutter like working man thinks we should do?
The day we start listening to these doofuses, we will have lost more than this or that "rich man's manipulated election". About which the NDP already over-emphasises the imporatance of, chasing and genuflecting to right wing opinion as it does obsessively.
We need to just ignore these guys and understand that real power is secured on the streets. Once the streets are controlled, suitable electoral outcomes will follow soon enough-, as part of that process.
It's not radical left wingers that control needs to be secured of... The problem with current democracy and democratic outcomes is, that there is already too much control of the left, and too little of the likes of so-called Working Man, and the ruling class view of the world and interferences in "democracy" he bows down and grovels before.
IAMC
5 years ago
Being conservative, I take delight in postings by Coyote and those other left wing ( liberal ) extremists. The left will continue to be in the margin, as long as these speakers have a voice.
The NDP on Vancouver Island call our soldiers in Afghanistan terrorists.
I call them warriors for freedom.
Frank
5 years ago
Ron, did you believe the great conspiracy about the Clintons? How they murdered Vince Foster etc? Wasn't just a back-page conspiracy either. ol' Kenneth Starr got mucho funding and tried to impeach Clinton over a bunch of things under the umbrella name "whitewater".
I think there's some interesting issues around 9/11 that have never been explained but the main thing is that this conspiracy theory tars the Bush administration as evil and that's good for the world. Keep it comin'
apathysux
5 years ago
..you call what we have 'freedom'?!?!
If this is freedom no wonder the Iraqi's don't want it!
I'm with coyote...at some point in the near future people who are tired of being pushed to the side in favor of f*ked up foreign policy and so the 'have mores' can have more, wil rise up and stop taking this sh*t. Personally I can't wait to join 'em in the fight to get back what our founding fathers intended for us to have.
apathysux
5 years ago
...I meant democracy's founding fathers NOt our country's founding fathers....just to clarify.
maestro
5 years ago
Re : 9/11
Still have vivid recollections of turning on the TV that morning.
After the first plane hit..seemd like an unfortunate accident. At the time I also recall an old documnetary I had seen about a plane that hit the Empire State Building sometime in the 1940's(?). It punched a hole in the ESB building, but it never collapsed, and ultimately repaired. I had assumed the WTC had another similar " shit happens " incident, and that the fire would be put out by a joint venture with the NYC Fire dept and the WTC sprinker system and the damage later repaired.
However, when the 2nd plane hit I think anyone that watched it knew , even subconsciously, that the second was no fluke, thus the first one couldn't be a fluke...call its statistics or probability...or whatever.
If one saw the early documentaries that came out in 2002, the experts were putting forth , albiet with grudging respect, that the hijackers had booked and boarded Trans - US flights at the start of their Trans US trips, and thus FULL of FUEL.
The planes seemed to hit the upper areas of both towers. If one saw the documentaries. the WTC towers had an interesting structural design to create very open /flexible floor designs. Seems the outer shell /walls were very integral to the support like a massive exo-skelton. Steel zig-zag web trusses (which supported the floors) connected from the outer wall "exoskeleton" to an interior core, with huge open spaces in between.
It almost looked like the hijackers had a set of plans, or very familiar with the WTC's strengths and weaknesses. The forensic engineering experts were basically saying that the building was designed to withstand fires of certain lengths. However, planes full of jet fuel allowed the fires to not only continue, but spread( ie down many many elevator shafts).
The fire's heat continued and grew to the point the metal did not melt, but instead lost its structural integrity. Anyone that leaves metal in a campfire long enough can bend it to some degree...ie heated metal weakens. The heated floor trusses lost strength , and this began to compromise the steel exoskelton (and vice versa) all of which were integrated via being mutually dependent on each other in a balance of structural forces.
It appeared that hijackers strategy was to weaken an area that still had a lot of weight above it...and ultimately create a vertical "domino effect" collapse by the pancaking of the upper floors above the fire....a pile driving effect onto the lower floors which were also weakened. Thus, once ALL the continually increasing momentum started on a weakened building ...it was game over...
Both WTC towers suffered the same basic fate by the same basic cause...The terrorists probably learned a lot from the failed 1993 attempt.
Can't buy the squib/controlled demolition conspiracy theory. Other documentaries show this process which takes a lot of prep time and effort...WAY too obvious.
However, the fact that both buildings came down on an almost perfectly downward vertical (ie non leaning ) still amazes me.
Nana
5 years ago
Oh PULEEZE! Watch the video above and then maybe you'll understand the the SCIENCE does not support the official theory. I'm so tired of you obscurantists.
Canadians are dying in a war that was based on a false flag terror op!.
Get your heads out people!
Coyote
5 years ago
I agree with Frank, again.
Is that the voice of a US citizen I hear there, Apathysux?
And I ask that with respect, because I know firsthand that many US citizens do agree with me.
Regards to you, my friend.
maestro
5 years ago
Huh???
Sorry N....but it appears many of us can't see YOUR quoted video version of " THE TRUTH" . I've tried 4 times. Please provide a better link..... (or are you the obscuRANTist ?)
While you are at it...try to access many other views and documentaries re 9/11. Note I didn't comment on the 9/11 Pentagon plane crash. I saw another documentary about that as well..there are MANY unanswered questions about that event , due to one keeps an OPEN mind.
Who are YOU calling an obscurantist???. Were you in the WTC building??. After any "event" happens,and if one is not an eye witness with ALL the facts,.. it ultimately becomes a trail of basic evidence,circumstantial evidence, facts, theories conjecture etc. and conclusions based on the aforementioned.
All I am basically saying is many of us are curious how a building (especially one built of vast amounts of steel ) can collapse...It sure as hell fooled 300 + Firemen and Policemen who died. The explanations provided by the documentary made a lot of sense...I have discussed similar phenomenon with firemen I know.
I sort of doubt that they would broadcast a documentary full of so called professional people with fake credentials, especially soon after the event, then this would really contribute to conspiracy theories.
PS While on the topic, anyone seen that other documentary that claims the WTC had huge deposits of Gold that went missing while all this was going on ???( Sorry N. not claiming that it happened,just if anyone SAW the same documentary too...)
nightbloom
5 years ago
Leading Bush critic at home calls Chavez a "thug"
Sep 21, 12:43 PM (ET)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - One of President George W. Bush's fiercest political opponents at home took his side on Thursday, calling Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez a "thug" for his remark that Bush is like the devil.
"Hugo Chavez fancies himself a modern day Simon Bolivar but all he is an everyday thug," House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said at a news conference, referring to Chavez' comments in a U.N. General Assembly speech on Wednesday.
"Hugo Chavez abused the privilege that he had, speaking at the United Nations," said Pelosi, a frequent Bush critic. "He demeaned himself and he demeaned Venezuela."
Simon Bolivar led the fight for independence against Spanish rule in several South American countries in the early 19th century and is cited by Chavez as a political model.
Chavez, a vociferous critic of Bush and the United States, has allied himself with U.S. opponents Cuba and Iran and has led a resurgence of left-wing populism in Latin America.
"The devil himself is right in the house. And the devil came here yesterday. Right here," Chavez said as he stood at the U.N. podium where Bush spoke the day before.
"It smells of sulfur still today, this table that I am now standing in front of," Chavez said.
His remarks drew applause from many of the delegates.
Bush administration officials have not responded directly to Chavez's remarks.
"I am not going to dignify a comment by the Venezuelan president to the president of the United States. I think it is not becoming for a head of state," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Wednesday.
Nana
5 years ago
This one works
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-6708190071483512003
Coyote
5 years ago
One man's "warriors for freedom" is another man's terrorist-, no doubt.
IAMC lives in his own particular fantasy world.
I'm damn sure the rural village folks who just endured the blood, maiming and terror of Operation Medusa, conducted by however well-meaning, if duped, Canadian Puppet Forces, certainly see "our boys" as terrorists. No bloody doubt.
Nana
5 years ago
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/
Has the text of the Chavez speech.
Here is some background on dear Nancy P.
Gerhardius
5 years ago
I am about 30 minutes into the 9/11 video provided by Nana. I am hoping that the quality of the research & reasoning improves in the remaining time as too often the narration resorts to the Straw Man like a good Republican. When time allows I will watch the remaining hour oe so.
Coyote
5 years ago
"House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi", one of Bush's fiercest critics !?!?
C'mon wilting nightbloom, you gotta do better than that. I know way more fierce critics of Bush than this "we gotta do it better", as in crush Iraq, milksops.
This is like calling Ignatieff or Layton "fierce" critics of Bush. (Though Layton, of late, is showing signs of wanting to rediscover his political testicles.)
And pass the tea and crumpets, hoist the pinky finger, dahling. Let's have a parliamentary debate while Rome, in this case The World, burns.
Truman Green
5 years ago
I think it's pretty helpful to examine the various timelines that are available on the net to learn exactly what the air force was doing on 911, and if there is a good case to be made that it stood down during the crisis.
911Timeline.net, in my opinion,is the best one available, but there are several.
Incidentally, Bush claimed he saw the first plane hit the building on tv hours before any tv show had broadacast the collision. Everyone except Rothschild knows he was lying.
lynn
5 years ago
Sulphur? The devil's scent. Bush's eau de parfum.
well, nightbloom, you're the one apparently reading the Drudge Report.
I don' think Chavez was fleeing, he just has his priorities...he even had time before he left to meet with a low-income group in the Bronx and promised to deliver free oil to their neighbourhood
He is no fool..speaking up against the Empire is inherently dangerous...it's all about reading the small print when it comes to freedom of speech and expression in Amerika. Wasn't it that oh-so- Christian, Pat Robinson, that called for Chavez to be assassinated?
"The loud applause that lasted so long that the organization’s (UN)officials had to tell the cheering group to cut it out."
Skookum1
5 years ago
When considering paranoia and conspiracy, as well as denial, always remember the following:
1) Everything you think you know is wrong.
2) The more you know, the more you should realize you don't know anything (paraphrasing Socrates, but Einstein said much the same thing)
3) There really IS a conspiracy, either out to get you or to dominate the world, but there's nothing you can do about it except play along and pretend you didn't notice. Whatever it is, it's too big, way more established and also way more powerful than you for you to be able to wrap your head around it, much less do anything about it (which paraphrases the Five Proverbs for Paranoids contained in Tom Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, but you'll find this kind of thing in Hunter S. and Tom Wolfe as well).
4) the media are paid to invent truth, not report it.
5) politicians always have something to hide
6) the public is an ass (was that P.T. Barnum or Teddy Roosevelt or .... Taft?)
7) The only way you can ever really learn what truth is comes by understanding what lies are, and what the lies are
8) most history is fiction
nightbloom
5 years ago
It seems Chavez has succeeded in united Bush's opposition...behind the president.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eX1lBOxoJeU
RANGEL:
nightbloom
5 years ago
OMG, what a stupid man...This isn't how to do it:
Chavez says Bush 'alcoholic' and 'sick man'
Sep 21 2:14 PM US/Eastern
Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez launched a new personal attack against President George W. Bush, calling the US leader an "alcoholic" and a "sick man" during a tour of the New York district of Harlem.
Speaking while walking in a Harlem street, Chavez told a group of passers-by: "Bush is an alcoholic, a sick man with a lot of hang-ups."
"He walks like John Wayne," declared the left-wing Venezuelan leader. "He doesn't know anything about politics, he got there because of Daddy." Bush's father, George Bush, was also a US president.
In a controversial speech before the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, Chavez called Bush "the devil" and "a tyrant."
Chavez went to Harlem to announce the expansion of a programme to send cheap Venezuelan oil to poor families in New York.
Frank
5 years ago
The U.N. shouldn't even be in the US, it would have been like putting the League of Nations in Berlin.
And the little nuke club known as the Security Council is a tired old vestige of the days of Empire.
Time the U.N. grew up and found new digs. Move to a city and country that would actually show some appreciation.
Frank
5 years ago
nightbloom, did you like the leader of Iran's speech?
Same theme as Chavez's.
Frank
5 years ago
And as for Chavez, when he wants to set up prisons around the world for his enemies to disappear into, when he wants to build more nukes than anyone else, control space and Venezuela starts invading Asian countries, I'll worry that he's got a screw loose.
Frank
5 years ago
By the way, nb, I meant to ask you, what's wrong with yesterday's NY Times editorial?
Pixelpump
5 years ago
Just in case you thought that only nutty left wingers wear the tifoil hats, here's a 911 video from, hey what do ya know, a republican -
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6708190071483512003
Perhaps the truth isn't a partisan issue after all.
Coyote
5 years ago
When are you going to tell us the bad stuff about Chavez, wiltingnightbloom. This all reads like good stuff to men, and to much of the people outside of the orbit of the US Empire. Indeed, a growing body of opinion within that orbit.
Chavez went to Harlem to announce the expansion of a programme to send cheap Venezuelan oil to poor families in New York.
Viva (Roman Catholic) Chavez!
Eh, I'm even impressed with the Muslim, Ahmadimijed. All the interviews with him the US media and its CBC propaganda affiliate have allowed to be shown, I thought, revealed a surprising quiet depth and acute political astuteness. And I'm an atheist.
Viva Ahmadinijed!
Hiss, boo Bush, the lying Owner of The World!
When you grow up nightbloom, and get some real depth of understanding about the world you live in, I might even come to like you.
Okay, that's going too far. Now, I really am grandstanding. That'd be like expecting a conversion from IAMC on the road to Damascus.
He and you are both just too committed to The Devil's Empire. You're just too hooked on sniffing sulphur. :-)
I mean, if one has to choose between the Devil and the deep blue sea-, I'll take the deep blue sea anyday.
IAMC
5 years ago
I think the Americans should shut down Ctco and the UN. Enough is enough.
Send the UN to Iran.
Coyote
5 years ago
Here is the link to the full (uncensored)press interview with Ahmadinejad, conducted, I believe, at the UN today. Read it and the man for yourself.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/21/AR2006092100829.html
Truman Green
5 years ago
Just watched more Chavez. He's calling Bush, "Mr. Danger."
Cut it out, nightbloom. You know darn well the world needs a little humour. In fact I loved it. Don't listen to Condumlista Price. She did, afterall, accidentally refer to Bush as, "My husband," eh.
Is this refreshing, or what! Somebody who speaks his mind.
Maybe Chavez'll be UN secretary general someday--imagine him doing an hour bio of all the world's Presidents and Prime Ministers, not to mention Kings, emirs, dictators and Warlord wannabees.
Whadya think he'd say about Peter McKay, after he tried to hide the fact that he was...uh..well, getting turned on by Condumlista?
maestro
5 years ago
And now...a word from our sponsor CONSPIRACY's R' US (or is it U.S.)
Viva la Chavez....who bombed the WTC...thats why he is in NY at the UN " scouting " for a sequel
Now ......back to the topic.
To "N"
Re: the 9/11 conspiracies.
I was able to link up with the video (Thanks!!!) It is a bit choppy, haven't finished it, but a few comments
Some comments:
I watched 2 of the blasting demolitions that occurred in Vancouver. I've also watched documentaries on the process. Let's exclude the planes as the cause. the premise of the video is that squibs and other methods were used.
One portion of the video basically said squibs were used " see the squibs " Huhhh?? They can qualify the premise that their is possible evidence or appearance of squibs...all that clip showed was puffs of smoke emitted from the side, similar to what squibs do.
There could be other valid reasons for this look. The video already loses credibility when it claims something 100% happened.
When metal shearing squibs are used...there is little room for error. you have to shear EVERY steel I - beam. The entire WTC exterior wall were literal webs of I - Beam. There would have to be 1000's of squibs to shear every piece of metal. No one saw 1000's of squibs being planted ???
Any one floor would require 100's of squibs, and all going off,....or else the building would have leaned.
Some documentaries in demolitions show failures due to incomplete blasting. It has to work perfectly, often within redundance ie back up and continued reviewing to make sure it's all hooked up .
Squibs detonated how??? wires or via radio frequencies ???
Sorry, the "SQUIB conspiracy theory" is just that , a theory and a poor one at that.
Good conspiracy theories have far better quality evidence with which to postulate conspiracies .
I'll keep viewing the video.
Nana
5 years ago
So you don't like the evidence for squibs...there is still the bent steel beams. the steel beams cut on a slant and the buildings collapsing at almost free fall speed. Obviously, the controlled demolition did work perfectly and quibbling over how the squibbs were detonated is pure pate' de red herring. Nothing else explains the result.
HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THE BLASTS IN THE BASEMENTS WHICH HAD MULTIPLE WITNESSES INCLUDING REPORTERS.
You are right though, good conspiracy theories do need good quality evidence and the official theory has zilch.
lynn
5 years ago
right on, Truman...Chavez's mocking, humourous tone is the perfect tactic of confrontation..its fearlessness immediately reduces Bush down to size..and reveals a dysfunctional UN (that under a US led Security Council, "the nuke club"... thanks, Frank) has made itself, in Chavez's words, "worthless". Democracy has become farce.
Working Man
5 years ago
Actually, Clear Cut, the most prolific posters here are not busy people. They are old, bitter and retired. I find a lot of the conspiracy nonsense rather comical and that is the main reason that I read this site. The really comical thing about the lefties is firstly, anyone who does not spout the Off the Shelf Rhetoric gets called names (like "neo-con") and secondly how they absolutely fail to see how their antics keep them from electoral success. COPE in Vancouver is a sterling example which however pales to the drubbing the NDP got due to Mao Tse Glen.
Anyway, I am a business person and anything that keeps the NDP out of office (namely their platform, leader and supporters) is fine by me, particularly since they'll never realise it or be able to modify their policies to actually hold power.
Because unlike the bitter elderly people here, most Canadians live successful and happy lives. We are the envy of most of the people of the world. When you are sitting alone and angry in a cabin in Williams Lake it is hard to imagine what most of the world is like I suppose.
nightbloom
5 years ago
Frank, In brief I had 2 basic problems with the NYT editorial: they adopted the same obscurantism as the violent protestors by re-asserting the error that Benedict had actually insulted Islam (without properly addressing implicit insinuation that it was a deliberate insult), and (secondly) they stripped the Pope's quote of the proper context (the emperor was not pronouncing on Islam as a whole, but on that which was new...the NYT was not alone in the MSM in omitting this essential qualifier).
As a result, they adopted the easiest and least honest path they could have, by both placing the Pope on the same level as the violent protestors, by skirting the issue of free inquiry & expression altogether, and then censoring the point the Pope was actually making about early and later drafts of the purportedly literal "Word of God". So the NYT article basically played it safe, avoided the hard issues, and deflated any prospect of genuine substantive dialogue.
That's all well and good - the NYT is free to play politics and demagoguery if its editors so choose - but they were hardly demonstrating their intellectual honesty or "free speech chutzpah" by printing up such a blatant sop to extremists.
It must have been too temping for them, as the Pope is so critical of all the Northeastern establishment's cherished sacraments (abortion, gay marriage, straight divorce, etc.). Not a shining moment for the NYT - it will be cited as a journalistic capitulation to politically expedient untruth when historians looks back on this fracas.
anarcho
5 years ago
Workingman said."The left has to realise that until it can get its lunatic fringe under control it cannot form governments."
Many of the conspiracy theorists about 911 are actually from the right, ie paleocons, and right-libertarians. As for 911, the most logical viewpoint would be to never trust anything the US govt says, ever. This does not mean, as others have pointed out, that the US state DID IT, but there is plenty of evidence they knew something like it was going to nhappen and let it happen as they needed a Pearl Harbor to rationalize their conquest of Iraq and imposing a csemi-dictatorship on the US with the Unpatriot Act.
Frank
5 years ago
nightbloom,
Whoa, I thought you were talking about the editorial on Mahar Arar. Guess your "today" and my "today" were different.
I missed the one on Benedict.
Working Man
5 years ago
anarcho, one loonie is much the same as the next from whatever side of the politcal spectrum. What has made the GOP so successful is that it has managed to distance itself from the loonie right. I have absolutely no doubt that there are plenty of nut bars associated with the GOP (the NRA immediately comes to mind) but they have been better at presenting a united party with a leader that knuckle draggers and Jesus Freaks can relate to than the left has.
This was Clinton's secret. Sure, the Mother Earth News set worked their butts off for him buy Hillary had iron discipline. They distanced themselves from Freaks and Loonies as far as possible, as well ns interest groups. That does not mean their were not around, they were, they were just better disciplined under the Clintons. Bill was set as a Good ole Boy and they had a platform that was very clear, "We are going to improve your life if you vote for us by doing this..." and it worked.
That has not happened here. The last NDP convention was case in point.
Frank
5 years ago
Which is what I was trying to get across earlier since during the entire 1990's the Right in the US, Canada and BC seemed to be finding dead Vince Fosters under every bush.
Some conspiracies are true though, such as that the federal Liberals really were involved in corrupt practices in Quebec. Governments really do tell lies now and then.
I would say not as often as the investor class that haunts the hallowed halls of the VSE, Nasdaq etc but then we expect more of people we elect than we do of lazy con artists.
Although I don't find the evidence that Bush did it convincing I keep reading because he and his PNAC friends (I'm looking at you Richard Perle) really are evil and if the hijackers didn't exist he would have had to invent them.
Frank
5 years ago
You're pulling our leg WM. The GOP is in bed with the loony right. They're funded by the loony right. More than half their volunteers are smiling Stepford-like members of the loony right.
Whenever Bush needs a great audience the buses arrive with an instant crowd of loony right to smile and jump up and down while holding each other hand's and singing God Bless America.
Without the loony right George is still chasing the dream of clearing his ranch of brush and armadillos.
Working Man
5 years ago
I might add, Frank, that Bin Laden has not been found and I doubt the Bush administration wants to, or is saving it for a week before the November election.
Besides, the Bush administration would have found an excuse for the war they are in anyway. It is just too much of a jackpot for the corporations, payback for all the billions funnelled into the GOP over the years. I have a feeling the GOP will get whipped this time but what does it matter anyway? Just like in 1991, it is the working stiff who will get stuck with the bill. That is the real conspiracy. Look for a market crash in the next six months, in my opinion, anyway. I'd wager next month, actually. The elite will have to cash out.
Working Man
5 years ago
You are 100% correct, Frank. The loonie right are the foot soldiers of the GOP and the corporations the money. However, the GOP has done a stellar job of having their volunteers stay on the script. That is the secret to their success and you know it.
Nana
5 years ago
WMthat is the nature of the authoritarian mindset....they get a script and they stick to it, because they either gave up thinking long ago,or never knew how.
Then, there is the truth that Houdini discovered and which I think is applicable for those who support the official 9/11 conspiracy theory, i.e. nobody likes to discover that he's been suckered in a con game.
Coyote
5 years ago
Nana
WMthat is the nature of the authoritarian mindset....they get a script and they stick to it, because they either gave up thinking long ago,or never knew how.
Then, there is the truth that Houdini discovered and which I think is applicable for those who support the official 9/11 conspiracy theory, i.e. nobody likes to discover that he's been suckered in a con game.
anarcho
5 years ago
The problem with people who try to debunk so-called conspiracy theories can be shown by this analogy. Suppose you know someone who is a known liar,. Has lied throughout his life, in every situation where it benefits him. He is accused of murder but claims he didn't do it, even though there is plenty of circumstantial evidence. Everyone who knows him figures that he most likely did it given his history. The US state has lied constantly. It lied about the Gulf of Tonkin, It lied about Cambodia, it lied about the Contras and etc and etc. It has also perpetrated some of the worst human rights violations in Latin America and other places. So why should we believe them about 911?
There is also the problem of coincidence. The neocons called for a new Pearl Harbor and shortly after, there was 911. The day that the terrorists chose to attack was the one day the US airforce was doing major war games and thus the usual procedure could not be followed with hijackings. One coincidence I could believe, two, no.
Nor does 911 have to be a mega conspiracy. In fact, if you take the minimal view, (they let it happen) as I do, all you need have is one person in the right place to carry it out. One person with enough influence to brush aside the many warnings of an impending terrorist attack, one person who could use the CIA back channels to Al Queda to let it be known that Sept 11 was an ideal day for an attack.
Coyote
5 years ago
WMthat is the nature of the authoritarian mindset....they get a script and they stick to it, because they either gave up thinking long ago,or never knew how.
Then, there is the truth that Houdini discovered and which I think is applicable for those who support the official 9/11 conspiracy theory, i.e. nobody likes to discover that he's been suckered in a con game.
Which rocks, nana. About describes the aging, angry neoconservative right (even of the NDP for that matter, bitter with the voters who have seen through them) spot on, I'd say.
The Liberals, on the other hand, are the ones who have gotten away with most of the "suckering". The neocons and the social democrats can only look on with envy, and in the case of the ndp, wanna join 'em.
It's called "bourgeois democracy". :-D LOL.
I'm still chuckling over that one.
anarcho
5 years ago
We should also beware of branding all the right-wing critics of 911 as loons. Some of them are actually very well read and their roots lie in the anti-imperialist "Old Right". In the US these people tend to work with the anti-war left. Google the following please. Joseph Stromberg, Doug Bandow, Wiliam S. Lind, Alan Bock, Justin Raimondo, Paul Craig Roberts, Charley Reese and Ron Paul. Our own (Toronto Sun) Eric Margolis belongs there too, no doubt, since he claims to be a conservative. It is important when opposing war and imperialism to build as broad a coalition as possible, and branding our right-wing allies as loons goes against this and only aids the war mogers and empire-builders.
Truman Green
5 years ago
Hey Frank and Working Man, don't forget to go here: http://standdown.net/
RickW
5 years ago
clearcut:
Just like they did with the (as yet unresolved) investigation into the Kennedy thing.
RickW
5 years ago
macsasquatch:
The most powerful men on the planet only got there because they detest and despise democracy. Operating within the confines of democracry would have made it impossible for them to accumulate the power they have.......democracy religiously practriced disperses wealth, not accumulate it.
alive
5 years ago
The complete video, that so many conveniently did not see, explained that at least two entire floors were sealed off, and construction happening.
Teams were stringing wires all over the towers days before, supposedly for new internet connection?
Lots of dust every morning, maybe from drilling into the concrete?
There were endless clues, but to some that means nothing as they do not wish to be convinced.
Maybe you guys know a lot about everything, but not enough about anything?
I know about metals, and it would take a blastfurnace temperature to make a 180 degree turn in such heavy steel and NOT cracking it!
If the floors simply started to fall,they would loose momentum as they kept hitting the one below, but the entire fall was at the speed of gravity!
If the floors worked loose and fell, Why did the center columns not stay upright? yet there were no centre columns to see and nobody can explain that one.
Examining the lower end of those centre columns shows the were sheared off at an angle exactly as demolition experts do!
Why did workers and reporters hear and feel explosions below the ground floor?
Those buildings were "white elephants" and heavily insured.
Building 7 was "pulled" some 6 hours later, had been vacated for hours by then. Nobody has explained why a building not damaged suddenly collapses?
but it housed material that was essential for convicting many people including the Enron clan. It also held the Mayors "bunker" but he did not use it.
all coincidences?
anarcho
5 years ago
Er, I see an error in my last posting. I didn't mean to imply that all the people I listed were 911 critics. (Writing too fast!) What I am criticizing is the idea that all right-wingers are necessarily loons. The neocons usual method of dealing with conservative critics of the war is to dismiss them as marginal nuts, when in fact they are highly knowledgeable and capable people.
Coyote
5 years ago
A damned interesting read, Truman. Thanks for the link.
I'll hang onto my reservations and cynicism as well, re the "official" explanations for 9/11, thank you very much.
And as for "the extreme right", I've always been prepared to work with anyone in the cause of a real and serious peace, and against war. I've even walked the picket line with one or two of them, who wanted the strike pay. Hell, I have for most of my life "walked the line" with all kinds of political folks. Nobody needs to tell me that.
That said, my practical experience has been that other than the odd "red Tory" from the old Progressive Conservative Party, thinking say the Orchard or even Dalton Camp type, and maybe the odd right wing ndper (you betcha they exist, as reactionary as any neocon in their time, and still-, the "enforcers" at party and labour conventions typically) who was forced into "mouthing for peace", for political "expediency" sake, of which WM kinda reminds me sometime), they were and are rare as hen's teeth. And I'm not saying they didn't and don't exist in their "populist" manifestation, but that I just didn't encounter too many. Still don't.
So while Anarcho is right, of course, in especially the anti-war cause-, in terms of day to day practicality... I don't worry up a sweat about offending them. I'm not looking for their vote. I'll judge them by their actions, same as I do anybody. And expect them to do the same with me. There's enough folks out there already, worrying about the tender "feelings" of the neoconservatives. Too many.
IAMC
5 years ago
The original premise of this thread was conspiracy theories. They were dismissed by many people woo I thought would support these theories, but did not.
I didn't want to question where all these dead Americans who died in Pennsylvania and the Pentagon. Are they in a witness protection program somewhere? No relative has broken the silence? No Joe Wilson with any credibility outing out his wife Valerie Plame.
I love American foreign policy. I love George Bush. I don't hate anybody.
solipsist
5 years ago
The final line in the video says it all - 'Wake up. You can make a difference'.
Having spent hundreds of hours (research is a hobby of mine) seeking everything I could find on the matter of 9.11, I think that the video does a reasonable job at asking questions. The official account is a bunch of hooey.
Personally, I don't think the Chimp in Chief had much to do with the plan or execution. The footage of him at Booker Elementary School shows someone frightened, clueless, and clearly out of his depth.
People ask questions such as "why would the government do such a thing?". Why not? They test the results of nuclear explosions, drugs, you name it, on the population, why would they care about a few thousand peons when there are billions - even trillions of dollars to be reaped, and a mindless citizenry to be subjugated?
The US of A was a grand experiment in democracy. Benjamin Franklin said that it would be seen whether man could govern himself, and thought that 200 years was time enough to find out. As it has happened, the experiment was (or wasn't - depending on expectation) a failure. Benjamin Franklin also said that 'any man who was willing to sacrifice freedom in exchange for security deserves neither'.
Our brethren to the South, and increasingly, we Canadians, seem to be willing to make that sacrifice.
anarcho
5 years ago
Anyone who thinks that the US state isn't capable of major crimes against its own people check this;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwood
anarcho
5 years ago
Coyotes sez, "they were and are rare as hen's teeth"
This is true in the Canadian context, but in the US it is different. Its the old "isolationist" and libertarian right which maybe represents 10-15% of the population.
Truman Green
5 years ago
Well, alive, you hit the nail right on the head.
I'm not an engineer, but I've been a construction supervisor in charge of suspended slab buildings supported by reinforced steel and concrete columns and I know that you are correct.
Regardless of what catastrophe occurred to the upper floors, as they collapsed they would lose momentum and stop as they piled into the floors below--EXACTLY AS YOU HAVE STATED.
It's not even remotely possible that these buildings would have collapsed as they did unless they came down by controlled demolition. I mean, folks, think about it.
This should be 100% obvious regarding building number 7, but it's true of 1 and 2, also.
I don't care if every piece of steel was white hot at the floor where the planes hit, unless this heat could be transferred downward through the steel columns in an even and equal manner horizontally throughout each floor, the building not only wouldn't collapse, but it's actually laughable to think that it would. Wtc and wtc2 came down exactly as if they had become fuses, and fuses require an energy source besides gravity to overcome the inertia in the mass below the explosive energy of the planes hitting the building and igniting fires.
Even if my requirement for even and equal horizontal dispersal of energy were met, it's just ridiculous to imagine that the collapses would have been spacially uniform, and that they would occur at anything remotely near regular unperturbed gravitational descent, as they did.
So what's going on here is just another example of the unfortunate circumstance that intelligence is not very evenly dispersed throughout the human species.
The buildings wouldn't have collapsed if 10 planes had hit each building simultaneously.
You need an energy source, here, folks. Gravity's not sufficient.
Hee hee--this is so silly--the mass of the building would have prevented the collapse, not facilitated it.
IAMC
5 years ago
I remember the railway rails as a young child on The Prairies. In the hot summer, the rails would twist and turn. Not melt! But twist and turn.
Even a human being can bend a piece of metal until it rips or shreds.
It doesn't take much to topple a 100 story building.
solipsist
5 years ago
No, it doesn't. It just takes a few hundred pounds of high explosive and some thermate.
Truman Green
5 years ago
I want you people to really think about gravity and thermodynamics for a while. Remember, when things burn and turn to ash or are pulverized by explosion their weights tend to decrease, eh, and this would have decreased the amount of mass available to be acted upon by gravity.
By the first law of thermodynamics, the energy would have gone somewhere and by the second law everything tries to attain the closest possible area of reduced concentration; that is, the outside air surrounding the building.
(Pulverized stuff just doesn't weigh very much, eh.)
The intact mass of the building below would quickly absorb the heat of any explosion, and the fires and explosions would have reduced the weight of the disintegrated floors. Remember, gravity has no magnetic force, so you can't accelerate the downward flow of energy beyond a certain speed and that speed would have had to be in excess of the heat absorption rate.
So, folks, no collapse without another source of energy besides gravity--preferably one which will continue ignition in the absence of oxygen.
The simple reason is: there's no reason for any of the buildings to collapse.
Truman Green
5 years ago
Here's how stupid this is: Why do you think the building didn't collapse on September the 10th? Answer: because the weight of the upper floors didn't cause it to collapse.
And so, the buildings was LESS likely to collapse on September 11 after the weight of the upper floors had been reduced by fires and pulverization.
Truman Green
5 years ago
And so...somebody blew up the goddamned buildings!
maestro
5 years ago
"N" :
re 9/11
Like any "conspiracy theory", it helps to keep an open mind and maybe even allow the mind to stay a bit sharper analyzing all the evidence...and debating the other possibilities.
When I saw the video and comments about noise in the basement and the smoke apparently emanating from it, I was thinking about the 9/11 specials on earlier this month.
The WTC seemed to have a number of elevators and elevator shafts (almost 100 ,I recall) to service the WTC buildings. Let's call these long 100+ storey vertical openings spanning the entire height (like straws) that will also allow access into the basements. At any given point in time the elevators are at various points/heights in the WTC.
The documentary talked about how the 9/11 events severed many elevator's infrastructure ie cables and many safety devices were incapacitated . Many of the "boom" noises in the basement could have been debris from crashed or crashing elevators, or other numerous items in free fall that end up crashing down these elevator shafts, and all the physics of acoustics (ie noise ) that entail from this.
The plane crashes, creates spilled fuel, it also inevitably migrated down these shafts using other laws of physics and thermodynamics..and was likley on fire at the time or caught fire later...so the bottom smoke is simply fuel or other burning debris that " bottomed out" and gave the appearance of "aha bomb noise and bomb smoke in the basement !!! "
Don't get me wrong, I love conspiracy theories, but often when one sees how they are often debated,debunked,etc. one sees how one can believe them at face value in kneejerk fashion, and thus develop a less objective mindset.
That's my own debating view ( and also open to debate ) of THAT facet of the 9/11 conspiracy theory.
freebear
5 years ago
I definitely think there are some questions about 9-11 and it is good ask them.
After all, was'nt the rationale for invading Iraq made up?!
Hasn't past U.S. and other state interventions been conspiracies (assassination, etc.)?
Critical thinking is a virtue.
Working Man
5 years ago
I actually missed that one from coyote (had a big day yesterday) and I got a helluva good chuckle out if it. It also go to reinforce my statement that anyone who does not spout the Off The Shelf gets called names. Very classy and highly comical since I have never voted for a so called "conservative" party in my life and I have never missed an election.
Coyote
5 years ago
Especially in light of Truman's construction supervision experience, but also having to include his innate intelligence which I have long appreciated, I must say a convincing bit of analysis in his explanations directly above.
I'm not particularly into buying any particular theory just yet, but gotta tell ya, after reading the post re the time-line of incidents, the behaviours of airport traffic control and the conduct or "stand down" behaviours of the US Air force itself, along with Truman's analysis, I'm more prepared to buy these aspects of the explanations and questioning, than I am the "official" story on 9/11.
There's more to be known yet, of course, about which we can still only largely speculate. BUT for all of IAMC's loving Amerika and loving everybody, which we also know from a long history with him here, that his loving "everybody" is for sure false, 8-D LOL, and he is certainly equally unconvincing with his simple "faith based" explanations around the events of 9/11 and the collapse of the towers, neither is the object of his love which we know exists, "official Washington" any more convincing in its explanations. Too much "faith" required all around for me.
Show me the beef, IAMC. I don't buy your pig in a poke assurances about "loving everybody". :-) Too out of character, for starters. LOL.
Truman on the other hand, at least did serve up some real beef here-, and Nana, along with many other good and thoughtful people.
What is crystal clear, however, is that we are centred in a time of much "official" State treachery, there in Washington and London, and here in Ottawa-, to say nothing of Victoria. :-)
It's been an interesting thread.
Coyote
5 years ago
Eh, WM, that's alright. One draws conclusios about another, like you of me, from their ideas set and overall view of the world-, regardless of that persons opinion of themselves.
I can call myself anything, vote or not vote.
I've been called a "Communist" here a whole number of times. I say I am not. But eh, other folks will draw and are entitled to their own conclusions. There is even a possibility that they are more right than I am, and I don't even know it. :-)
If it walks, talks and acts like a duck, the odds are..., even if the duck thinks it's a giraffe and votes for the rhinos. It just doesn't know it's a duck. :-)
Coyote
5 years ago
Part of the problem here of course is, that there is a Working Man and a Workingman, confusing the issue around here from time to time, who take some different positions. If I've got that one wrong, then you are entitled to and have my apology. :-) (Indeed, there are one or two other monikers like that, such as Skookum and Skookum 1, again taking radically different political positions.)
I don't hear the voice of climber there, do I, WM? :-) LOL
There's also more than one or two folks around her what take on more than one personae themselves, even playing devil's advocate against themselves sometimes.
Everything is not always what it seems around here on these Tyee threads. And suspicions abound. (About who is sleeping with who, say the boss for example. :-) Chuckling.
Nana
5 years ago
Maestro
The elevator shafts did not go straight down. There were 2 "skylobbies" which would have prevented the scenario you outlined of either equipment or fuel falling straight down the shafts.
Eyewitnesses said the ground floor lobby looked as though that was where the planes hit. Others said there were explosions in the basement. Falling cables which couldn't have fallen the full length of the buildings can't explain any of that.
apathysux
5 years ago
in reply to coyote...way up up there about 20 hours ago...
No I'm not a US citizen but I was married to a military man and both of my children were born there. I lived there long enough to recognize (10 years)and see firsthand their idea of freedom. I have watched from there and here that attitude slowly bleed into this normally wonderful country of ours.
The entire US mantra sucks, their military training is all about domination and abuse, it produces messed up people (my ex) and it bleeds out into their public. I have many friends there who also agree and do not consider what they have 'freedom'. I knew many who live 'off the grid' because of the invasiveness of the US govt. and since then it has only gotten worse and our stupid PM is buying into it. could go on and on...
I am currently working on getting a better education so that at some near future point I can contribute to the fight for true freedom and democracy (for the people, by the people)in a more meaningful way....anyhew...back to catching up on the posts.
Regards.
maestro
5 years ago
To: the rainbow coalition of various political stripes aka Everyone.
I don't think anyone at any part of the political spectrum is going to argue that Bush engaged in his various Pro-active militaristic escapades without using the 9/11 events as a cause celebre'.
War is generally a propoganda product of first garnering one's own people's support. Recall Viet Nam ? Couldn't be sold anymore. Subsequent wars needed some cause celebre'.
Personally, I simply can't buy the conspiracy theories that they would nail the WTC in order to create a cause celebre' excuse .
FAVE: I love the Richard Clarke quote above " THE GOV'T IS NOT SUFFICIENTLY COMPETENT TO PULL OFF SUCH CONSPIRACIES AND IS TOO LEAKY TO KEEP THEM SECRET ".
Clarke apparently has many political axes to grind..or is he bluffing and part of the conspiracy too? Often , there is nothing more vindictive that a scorned Civil Servant.
Cheaper and less painful with less evidence is to, for example,..blow up the Statue of Liberty when its closed...no one there...or Washington monument...or Golden Gate bridge...some other American icon.
Seem to recall the WTC symbolism to terrorists was the WTC was THE ultimate symbol of US imperialistic global capitalism WTC = WORLD TRADE CENTER.
Documentary I saw showed Bush and his entourage crew were running around like chickens with their heads cut off after his school visit during 9/11 . Very disorganized, communication failures...etc. Was that faked? It was not very flattering...
Eternal question is if another President was in, what would have been THEIR reaction ? Probably not much different.
Coyote
5 years ago
And WM, there's even one or two, such as yourself, if I recall correctly, who think I and others here are simply "embittered old people", who should presumably just return to our rocking chairs and shut-up. LOL.
8-D And ehhhh, you're entitled to your opinion.
I, on the other hand, think I'm a rockin' oldie but goodie. :-)
apathysux,
It was extremely interesting reading your story. You are obviously an interesting person. And love your moniker.
And I would say, based on my own limited experience with US citizens and their military, the latter with whom I have had some "fairly" extensive experience as well, though more around the time of Vietnam, that the conclusions you have drawn about echo my own. Clearly things have actually only got worse from that time to this.
And good luck with your ambition to get a better education, so that you can better contribute to the movement for "true freedom and democracy". That movement, here in Canada no less than the US, needs more folks just like you.
A pleasure to read you and make your acquaintance.
maestro
5 years ago
"N"
Note the WTC underground parking duly noted in the various 9/11 documentaries, much of which survived. Also...Ever see that almost intact basement book store shot that looked like nothing happened ???
How do people normally access/exit undergroung parking? ...its via elevators....(ie for the handicapped ) .I have never seen a building that didn't have both elevators and stairs right to the very bottom of the given building, including parking areas. Most elevator shafts still have an access pit at the very bottom below the very last floor. To service the vehicular public there must have been several stories of underground parking...hence elevators.
Check Vancouver construction sites,big deep holes...not for condos,its for parking. Elevator shafts are often one of the first things built.
As I said,all sorts of things were falling down these shafts...all sorts of possibilities...aerosol containers,...cleaning supplies...volatile/explosive construction supplies ? Several floors were taken out by the planes initial impact...had to have blown open elevator doors, and elevators weren't acting as plugs either,probably incinerated , and whole shafts were likely left open and exposed , right down to the bottom floors.
Re the ground floor lobby:
to me that was the unfortunate camouflage that looked far too harmless and banal and lead to the tragic demise of many. I have seen those ground floor lobby video shots over and over. The lobby's lack of severe "foreshadowing" damage, in my view, lured far too many people in, especially emergency personnel... who felt it was simply a fire...with a theory/view this is a steel building...won't burn ..and fire's inside steel buildings could be put out.
However, anyone still inside when this theory/view failed was simply and unfortunately toast.
apathysux
5 years ago
Most of the aforementioned (in various posts) illegal, lying, cover-up actions of the US government and others, it has most often been found to actually be the work of underlings or opposing agencies, such as the CIA. I personally do not beleive Bush JR smart enough to pull it off but I do certainly find the idea that BUSH SR. , warmonger that he has always been, had his hands in it possible if not likely, and it could most definitely have been the work of the CIA in partnership with any number of other organizations, foreign or domestic.
Not too farfetched in my opinion.
As for the way the towers came down I know nothing about thermodynamics, physice, etc. but it was very reminiscent of every demolition that I have ever seen, including the demolition of the Rampart on CSI last nite ;-) When buildings in other parts of the world have thigs fly into them the buildings go sideways, topple ontop of each other, etc. etc. I think those buildings were set to give the biggest show causing the least damage to surrounding buildings.
Re: a quote of some Amerikkkan re Chavez's speecha and saying how wrong it was of him to offend Amerikkkans on Amerikkkan soil...the UN is International soil and should be put somewhere where other countries would be treated with more respect. I am so F**kin tired of Amerikkkan arogance and their whole 'how dare you sh*t on me' attitude after wiping their collective asses from the dump they just took on us!
Nana
5 years ago
Maestro
Why the WTC? It was to collect the insurance and turn a 2 billion dollar loss( the cost of standard demolition paying regard to the hazardous nature of the materials) into a 7 billion dollar winner for Larry Silverstein, great friend of Netanyahu for whom PNAC was originally written. The Israeli connection is glaringly obvious to anyone who cares to look.see:
http://www.rense.com/general64/moss.htm
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/fiveisraelis.html
Just how did Osama and the boys get NORAD and the US Airforce to Stand Down?
see: http://standdown.net/
Nana
5 years ago
Maestro
Come on, I didn't say elevators didn't go to the basements, I said they didn't go staight through, like straws(your analogy).
The elevator shafts were interupted by lobbies. No skyscrappers over a certain height have continous elevator shafts,they would act as chimneys in case of fire.
You are grasping at straws.
Truman Green
5 years ago
After I posted my explanation last night I surfed around to see if I could find anyone who had the same explanation, and I came on this site by a Morley Evans. Amazingly to me, Evans has come up with EXACTLY the same theory.
I can't get the link to work but you can find it by googling: The Defining Event of Our Times. Poppycock by Morley Evans.
July 1, 2006.
The entire site is fascinating, but please scroll down to the paragraph entitled, "NOTES," and compare his explanation with mine.
His explanation has all of the elements of mine, including the reduced weight of the upper floors because of fire and pulverization; the need for an oxygen free explosive; a consideration of the rate of fall in a vacuum--I explained this as the fact that gravity is not a magnetic force, thereby precluding the existence of any accelerated velocity past the energy absorption rate, which would have been required to present a "fuse-like" descent appearance.
Truman Green
5 years ago
This should work for he Morley Evans site:
http://morleyevans.com/Contents/Sovereignty/9-11.html
maestro
5 years ago
"N"
Sorry
I am missing your point.
While I don't have the WTC plans in front of me, my own experience is that most multi- storey buildings (above flood plains) have underground parking...the elevators of which which are (connected) below to a main floor above aka LOBBY,.....which is then connected to the rest of the building above ....hence my vertical straw analogy. I've never personally seen an elevator shaft that went sideways ie other than pure vertical. Every underground parking lot I've been in takes you to "L" aka LOBBY or "M" aka MAIN floor...and also higher floors with the push of a button...no transfers.
Also, remember, there were many elevators hence many shafts. The 9/11 videos of the lobbies don't show all of them. ie such things as service elevators were less obvious . Remember, the floor area of each WTC floor(ie obviously including the LOBBY ) was huge.
Also, if get a chance, check that small boxy room on top of most tall buildings that stands out ....that's not a penthouse for millionaires on a budget...its often the top of the elevator shafts directly below .
Re your chimney analogy and continuous elevator shafts....check stair case construction....its not generally staggered as you go up, but a continuous vertical zig zag . This can also create a vertical chimney effect.
Also " chases " by which wiring and plumbing etc. gets fed through can also create the "straw" effect.
Conclusion = the possibilites are numerous, which thus often dilutes most conspiracy theories.
Nana
5 years ago
Maestro
Only the freight elevator was a continuous
shaft.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/World_Trade_Center_Building_Design_with_Floor_and_Elevator_Arrangment.jpg
'There was nothing there but rubble' Mike said. 'We're talking about a 50 ton hydraulic press ? gone!' The two began yelling for their co-workers, but there was no answer. They saw a perfect line of smoke streaming through the air. 'You could stand here,' he said, 'and two inches over you couldn't breathe. We couldn't see through the smoke so we started screaming.' But there was still no answer.
Sergei Siletzky was a helper at WTC. At the time of the attack, he was attending class at Local 94.
The two made their way to the parking garage, but found that it, too, was gone. 'There were no walls, there was rubble on the floor, and you can't see anything' he said.
They decided to ascend two more levels to the building's lobby. As they ascended to the B Level, one floor above, they were astonished to see a steel and concrete fire door that weighed about 300 pounds, wrinkled up 'like a piece of aluminum foil' and lying on the floor.
(Chief Engineer Magazine: http://www.chiefengineer.org/article.cfm?seqnum1=1029 )
It's ok, you feel the need to defend the official story because that's what you heard first. It's a trick of our brains.
I first heard about it from Barry Zwickers talk which is available at:
http://www.workingtv.com/zwicker.htm
I think how the brain works part is in the 3rd segment
maestro
5 years ago
" N "
Re the WTC and Insurance Claims.
Well, in playing " Devils Advocate" , (which is my MAIN aim ), insurance companies are like Las Vegas, they don't get rich by cutting cheques aka NOT paying out claims, if there is any possible way whatsoever to weasel out of them ,they will.
They would much rather spend Millions in COURT than spend Billions in PAYOUT.
The insurance companies,... , if A-N-Y-O-N-E,... would likely bring out the truth about 9/11 conspiracies far more diligently and ruthlessly than any Gov't Investigation/Commission.
What would be in their " cold neo-con/old-money con/ future-con etc. etc. capitalist hearts' " interest NOT to investigate to either delay or deny cheque -cutting.....that goes against many TYEE bloggers contention of the US = evil $$$$ empire conspiracy theory.
Example:
Advice from experience re: Insurance. Check your own policies re Fire. ARSON is not considered "FIRE"...FIRE is considered accidental/non -intentional. ARSON is considered malicious damage/vandalism...you may need that covered separately = additionally= more $$$
alive
5 years ago
Truly amazing that while most posters agree that Bush etc. might well have had a hand in that WTC happening, they still try hard to refute simple evidence.
For example even in Vancuver you see buildings where some elevators only service a certain numbers of floors.
Called highspeed elevators usually.
They do not go from top to bottom, OK?
Every argument put forth has a counter-argument.
It is hard to draw any conclusions, except that there are too many coincidences there!This was a well planned and well executed sabotage.
It sounds strange that anyone in the US can arrange such an operation, but given unlimited money and protection from above, why not?
Personally I would not be surprised if those who were involved have mysteriously died since.
Nana
5 years ago
Oh, Maestro they went to court...and Silverstein even won his claim that it was two separate events!
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2004/Larry-Silverstein-WTC6dec04.htm
solipsist
5 years ago
Having been to the top of the WTC (years ago, when it was standing), I can assure you that the elevators were staggered. No elevators went to the top - not just because of the "chimney effect", but because elevator technology at the time could not have a continuous lift for 110 floors. The elevators went up to one of three sky lobbies, at wich one would change elevators for the next segment.
911 was a scam, and unless the detractors of that theory do extensive research, they will never accept it.
maestro
5 years ago
" N "
N.B. I'm not actively defending anything.
How many of us possibly believed in the Sasquatch ot Ogopogo. Heard many explanations re 'Pogo. Many make sense,even moreso given some personal observation I made in light of past explanations.(ie wave patterns ).
Thanks for the links.
I reviewed the WTC elevator plans. However, these still does not disprove my own Devils Advocate explanations.
BC Dude
5 years ago
Why was all the 9/11 rubble carried away without any forensic tests done, and then buried?
A total massacre by the Bush cabal. Harper makes me sick!
I just watched the DVD "V for Vendetta:" WS It's a great eye opener to what is acually happening now in our time!
The things that will destroy us are: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice: Mahatma Mohandas K. Gandhi
maestro
5 years ago
"N"
Exactly my point...
Hair splitting legal semantics about terrorism etc....no third " other conspiracy " party.
Insurers do pay out and then try to go after the real culprits later IF they exist.
There are apparently no 3rd party culprits, aka US Gov't or Freemasons or Illuminati ,US Military Industrial Complex etc. Don't have the court transcripts....maybe future appeals ?
Seems WTC insurance case is closed via a Civil Court Case and all the evidence and arguments brought before the courts.
Nana
5 years ago
Maestro Your review of the WTC elevator plans is nonsense if you don't understand that the actuality cancels out your theory.
B.C Dude
Barry Zwicker spoke about how the Guy Fawkes-Gunpowder Treason was a false-flag operation led by Lord Cecil and it took 400 years to uncover. V's mask brought it to mind.
maestro
5 years ago
"S"
See "N" s link re elevator plans.
Many elevators per floor.
Elevator shafts are not the only vertical cavities in a tall building, nor are floors hermetically sealed from each other.
If not mistaken, the WTC was built in the very early 1970's prior to building codes many of us take for granted,ie modern energy efficiency,fire codes etc.
Nana
5 years ago
Maestro
Getting back to your original premise that what made the booms in the basements was falling cable is impossible in light of elevator design and eyewitness accounts both inside and outside the buildings....what the dickens are you arguing about.
As far as the 24 insurance companies not going after Silverstein for arson ..he was insured against terrorism. and that's what it was no matter who did it.
Coyote
5 years ago
One of my favourite all time movies. :-) A fiction that spoke the truth.
Clear Cut
5 years ago
Maestro,
You're never going to win with these people - they don't want to accept the official truth. Your theory obviously makes perfect sense: the rocket fuel that wasn't burned off on impact leaked down about 25 floors, pooled up in the lobby where it washed up some aerosol cans before making its way to the next set of elevators, continuing the process until it found its way to the basement where it was ignited (probably by a careless smoker or someone who didn't completely put out a campfire) and the ensuing explosion melted some supporting steel and down came the building.
Truman Green
5 years ago
This is excellent, too. Other steel-supported buildings burned and the result was exactly as my theory claims should have happened with the 3 buildings.
None of them collapses. Yet, we're supposed to believe that three of them did on 911, one of which was not hit by a plane.
http://www.serendipity.li/wot/other_fires/other_fires.htm
Nana
5 years ago
Clear Cut
You are absolutely right that nobody who spouts nonsense, as both you and Maestro have done in spite of the evidence presented refuting your conspiracy theory, can win. .There is a great deal more at stake than winning an argument.
I can see the headlines now in your through the looking glass world. Careless Smoker Ignites WTC Fires. Jet fuel, not rocket, fuel is kerosene which burns away quickly at 875F. see http://www.rense.com/general39/points.htm
Truman Green
5 years ago
Even NIST admits that the fuel was all burned within first ten minutes. Even if it reached temperatures of 1100 degrees at which the steel would have lost 50% of its strength, it wouldn't have burned long enough to do the global damage to the columns. (remember my theory of insufficient global heat dispersal)
NIST claims that it was the other debris, papers, carpets etc. that did the damage, but this kind of stuff would never burn hotter than 500 degrees, so these fires couldn't have done the damage.
apathysux
5 years ago
We can all argue the various facts, falsities, evidence, etc etc..until we are all blue in face. Fact is when someone's mind is trult set there is generally no changing it.
Most can agree here that Bush and the gang acted erroneously in many ways, covered up who knows what all, and has lied thru his teeth since he got in office. We now have a complete idiot for a Prime Minister (okay a smart idiot but an idiot nonetheless) who is all for selling out our sovreignty to the so-called 'Owner of the world'and is apprently ready to join him and his on their 'f*k the world tour'. (the softwood lumber thing just rattles my chain never mind all the environmental cutbacks....awwwggghhh!!)
My question is how can WE the numerous discontents and p'od taxpayers and citizens make them accountable for their actions and get them the hell out?!!? any ideas?? How do we get the apathetic to feel powerfull and motivated enough to get off their/our collective asses and make the necessary big changes?
Any ideas??? This is far more important to me than endless discussions as to how the towers came down. Anyone with an eyeball that works and a brain that hasn't been dulled by the Global fluff and bull can see there are MAJOR issues that need to be resolved in a big frikkin hurry.
apathysux
5 years ago
BTW... I really don't see another website being the answer. We need a non-violent protest the size and shape being such that will bring the Western World to a complete standstill. Make them recognize that we, the people will no longer take this crap.
If we can't get people to unite in a cause to save our sovreignty, we will soon be absorbed into the mighty US of A. At that point I'll just hope that we can still fly our flag so we can still travel the world without being viewed as the real 'terrorists'.
Coyote
5 years ago
Which is where matters have floundered to here. And to which there is no sudden or wave of the wand solution. It means people beginning to come together to build alternatives and actions. Easily said and harder to do, no doubt.
There are some indications that Tyee is certainly growing in its "progressive" readership, to what degree, only his lordship really knows-, if even he does entirely. So I don't think there is any question but that there is a growing sense of alarm at a popular level , about the direction in which things are turned by the current neoconservative reality. The problem additionally is, without any exception known to me, that all the classical movements and party alternatives have lost their credibility.
Enter the petard upon which all further forward movement hangs, challenging the status quo. It is always hard to start over and from the bottom.
That said, some of us here have been waiting, listening and watching, without entirely being sure for what, but for indications of a concrete desire to "move" on the part of significant and hopeful numbers of people, locally, by region, provincially or nationally, however this thing begins to manifest itself-, and when. And there is no question but what while there is a still constant reluctance or hesitation to commit and move, but what there is also a growing disquiet amongst the populace around the ever growing war dangers and threats, particularly coming out of the US Empire power centres. Parallel with and joined with that, are increasing popular concerns, I think, around credible indications of a betrayal and sellout of the very country itself being in the offing, and being consummated fast behind the scenes, by collaborationist neoconservatives and US Empire Loyalists , rooted in the government of Canada and party systems of the nation(s) itself, and serving the US Empire-, openly or surreptitiously, or with their silence.
Continued next post...
Coyote
5 years ago
From previous post...
All of which is depressing enough to paralyze people and prevent them from taking action as well. So, it has to here anyway, been much a matter of having no choice buy to wait for these twin realities of never ending war, in service of the US Empire, and the betrayal and sell-out of the nation itself to catch up with people, them accept the reality and come to the understanding that they cannot dither and waver from defence of the nation much longer, and either act or surrender to the fact of the loss of Canada.
All that said, from time to time I post my email address here, at some risk, and those who are prepared to act and begin to organize people, I think non-violently but aggressively none-the-less, in a mass and take charge of the streets and agenda kind of way, are free as they choose to contact me and join a separate discussion group. (I am not "in charge" in any way, but merely a conduit through which leadership and activists can perhaps "begin" to come together, talk separately amongst themselves, and begin to build whatever it is they collectively decide is appropriate at any given stage. The object, however, I think and propose, is to begin as quickly as possible to move beyond words alone and develop challenging actions. )
And I am prepared to hand off that responsibility of being this conduit to anyone so chosen or agreed upon, at any time and as soon as possible. I feel I'm realistically too old to give the energy levels and commitment required anyway. (Which doesn't mean I still cannot give out as good as I get, or am not prepared to kick a little ass as necessary. :-) And possible. :-)
Okay, so "non-violence" doesn't come easy to me. 8-D The point is, I think it is appropriate to the time and situation. It is a political expediency to which I currently genuflect and commit myself.
apathysux
5 years ago
Non-violence doesn't come easy to me either :-)...but I have learned the hard way that passive resistance along with aggressive non-violent action, ie, very public legal challenges, constant verbal challenges just short of harassment ;-) often work...at least in my personal life...
...we gotta pick our battles and then go forward with all we can muster swinging...This is in my opinion a battle that requires fighting...as such...I'm all for joining a group that is making inroads into moving toward forcing change.
Keep an eye out for an email.
Nana
5 years ago
A mass day of resistance has been announced for Oct 5 in the US http://www.worldcantwait.org/
alive
5 years ago
OK folks, how about the plane that supposedly hit the Pentagon?
read this quote:
.. A US military plane, not one piloted by al Qaeda, performed the highly skilled, high speed 270 degree dive towards the Pentagon that Air Traffic Controllers on 9/11 were sure was a military plane as they watched it on their screens. Only a military aircraft, not a civilian plane flown by al Qaeda, would have given off the "Friendly" signal needed to disable the Pentagon’s anti aircraft missile batteries as it approached the building. Only the US military, not al Qaeda, had the ability to break all of its Standard Operating Procedures to paralyze its own emergency response system." http://blog.lege.net/content/Seven_Hours_in_September.pdf
Another question is why is the hole smaller than the aircraft that supposedly hit it?
maestro
5 years ago
" N "
" With all due respect "
I don't want to use the classic line about avoiding jury duty aka when one is called to be part of the jury selection pool,and wishes to avoid jury duty ... appear with a rope that has a noose around the end...works every time.
Again, thanks,....You are providing interesting links. etc. Actually the one with the basic floor plan created an interesting new take to explore later , (though most of what I previously posted is consistent with my understanding of its construction years ago via documentaries...such as the design of the building ie open floor plan.
Also other so-called evidence?
The one video clip from a long distance away from the WTC shows a puff of smoke at or near the base between two tall buildings...correct ?
A lawyer would tear that " bomb in the basement theory " apart and say the buildings from that camera view obscure the detail...maybe its steam vents..exhaust emisions ?..maybe its something else ....no proof of a 100% WTC connection...it's called "reasonable doubt" via other possibilities .
There were elevators shafts that ran the full length of the building all 110 stories.....correct? Nobody has refuted other vertical cavities or orifices ....correct? I never stated snapping cables as the noise( but was mentioned in the documentaries I saw)...there are hundreds of possibilities in a mega chaotic event.
This ain't an ICBC collision where most of the evidence is still there. ie skid marks?, vehicles' brakes working ? DUI ?
The WTC collapse happened, the building and most of the evidence was destroyed quickly after. That we can agree. Perfect breeding ground for conspiracy theories and conjecture.
The " terrorist" insurance claim ? Exactly my point re: my differentiating between fire insurance and arson . Arson is a form of terrorism isn't it? Premeditated act of violence/destruction ?
People seem to forget this WTC already experienced a terrorist attack in 1993. Mr. Silverstein obviously saw the need to insure via this past terrorist attack..that's called WOE is me the first time ....SHAME on me the 2 nd time. I'm just wondering what his premiums were based on actuarial evaluations....actually I am surprised he even was even able to get insurance.
Also, and " boom in the basement" ? Well the 1993 WTC attack showed that terrorist tactic DID NOT work, ie that to fall the WTC like a tree was not going to work...." squib installing shift like James Bond at midnite " ???
C'mon , these terrorists may be nuts..... but they ain't stoopid. Choice of planes was grudgingly brilliant.
Either that, or George Lucas and Co. used great CGI effects to fool those of us that weren't there... all we saw was a video...right? ....much like Neil Armstrong "never really landed on the moon" conspiracy theories.
solipsist
5 years ago
The quote below is from an essay at The Republic which, while it rambles, and seems to have been written in a state of manic euphoria, illustrates why so many people still believe the official story about the events of 9.11.
http://republic-news.org/archive/147-repub/147_matsui.htm
climber
5 years ago
Like Truman Green I have worked construction, lots of concrete, slabs, columns, mostly biulding forms, and a little tying rod. On 9/11 I was eating breakfast and had turned on CNN after hearing about the first plane on CBC radio. I saw the second plane hit just as I looked up, I said "holy fuk", then I went to work. I have watched a lot of shows on demolition, have a pretty good understanding of how gravity works, and right from that day I knew something was suspect. But like JFK, the official, flawed version will persevere. Speaking of JFK, I saw a recent CBC tv program where they skimmed over the evidence in a pathetic manner and basically told everyone enough time has gone by and to accept that Oswald did it. Who knows, some thing is wrong here, don't know exactly how bad it is, but its like JFK, I don't know what really happened, but if you buy the single bullet theory, you believe in the Easter Bunny.
Coyote
5 years ago
Amen. And agreed.
And Nana, enjoyed your link. There is a "resistance" struggling to emerge. It ain't gonna be easy, but it is going to happen.
And make no mistake, there is need of a resistance movement in this country, with its own independant analysis, conclusions, and development of strategy and tactics.
You have my attention and respect, woman.
Forget Maestro. He's just jerking your chain. He's irrelevant. A jerk-off.
I don't know what anyone else thinks, nor care much, but you and many others here, along with my old friend Truman, who is near always brilliant, have been doing an excellent job of making the case for legitimate and entirely rational conspiracy possibilities, outside the so-called official conspiracy theory which points to Osama and the Muslim peoples, of agencies of the Empire, AND upon which they base their Never Ending War ambitions.
And regardless of Rothchild's arrogances.
Always a pleasure. :-)
KitsCommuter
5 years ago
Oops, did I say that? What I really meant to say was...
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7750532340306101329
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/143607/rumsfeld_9_11_confession/
Coyote
5 years ago
Interesting perspective, climber.
maestro
5 years ago
Hey....
Never let it be said there are closed minds on this site...
Go a few blogs up and contact the listed Insurance companies that paid out WTC owner Silverstein.
Don't they give out huge $$$$ rewards for info leading to the arrest and conviction of insurance fraud artists?
PS Hey "spayed mongrel"...time for the vet...also remember the leash aka noose.
solipsist
5 years ago
For more (much more) that doesn't add up regarding 9.11.
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/flight77.htm
Nana
5 years ago
Climber
The word came out on the Magic Bullet Theoryfrom Lawrence Livermore Labs about a month ago.....impossible!.
Anybody with half a brain knew that, but it took 43 years to get a publicly funded institution to say it.
Coyote
The number of people who think the official conspiracy theoryabout 9/11 is barmy, keeps going up...in spite of the efforts of Maestro and his ilk.
It's the Left Gatekeepers who really bug me. Barry Zwicker speaks about them and has devoted a chapter to the phenomenon in his book. Besides Noam Chomsky,(who it seems couldn't recognize a conspiracy in any of the assasinations of the 60s,) one of the same crew would seem to be the author of the article we're discussing...an editor at The Progressive.
maestro
5 years ago
" N "
Where's the noose...???
I ain't picked sides either way on the 9/11 .....capice? Didn't I blog earlier about the Pentagon crash = ???....I think the jury on that is out EITHER way.
Was that George Bush Sr. in Aisle 7 and Osama in Aisle 17 when Burnaby Metro Town Save -On - Foods collapsed in 1988 ?
The " official story" was bad engineering, and an oversite not picked up on. Whats the official and unofficial conspiracy theory there ???.
Yeeessshhhh ?!?!
Here's an old science question...How come water disappears if left in a bowl and the room temperature never reaches above 30 Celsius (water boils ie evaporates at 100 degrees Celsius at STP )
All your so-called expert links could easily be BS posted by some clever web designer...use some COMMON SENSE. This TYEE topic seems to attract some quasi-dangerous " ignorance terrorists " moreso than other topics.
PS Some of you sound like children crying because you can't have your way, and want to start pissing matches... if you want to start a pissing match ....BRING IT ON .
Nana
5 years ago
In light of Karzai's visit and efforts to whip up "Support for the Troops", this is something that should be sent to everyone in government.
I want our soldiers out of Afghanistan and 9/11 is the bogus reason they are there.. killing and being killed for opium and oil.
http://www.v911t.org/SergeantLauroChavez.php
All of this is very interesting to me it sickened me so that I left
the Army after coming back from an 8 month deployment to Afghanistan.
There were just too many questions that no one could answer, too many
things that did not make sense. How is it possible to have a training
exercise about planes hitting the WTC and then actually have planes
hit the WTC? This kind of thing just does not happen unless its
pre-planned. What reason would there be to have this type of exercise
on that morning, Ill tell you if you are placing fake planes all
over the north American aerospace grid then you have no way of
knowing which planes are real and which are fake. Then to thicken the
plot you put a civilian in charge of NORAD so that the military does
not have the power to initiate the order for jets to be scrambled to
intercept. If the military would have still commanded power over NORAD
they would have scrambled jets because they would have simply
followed the procedures that had been in place for this type of
situation for years and years and scrambled jets.
KitsCommuter
5 years ago
One of the things that strikes me the most about the events of September 11, 2001 is how the media and the current administration in the US deals with people who have a different opinion on what transpired that day. The prime objective is not to dispute contrary versions of events so much as it is to ridicule and shout down those who are trying to present their story. People are characterized as nut-cases and lunatic left fringe elements. Everything is done to character assassinate the individual and the lies are repeated over and over again. Over time, all that can be remembered by the general public about the individual is the association that the slanderers have smeared them with. I remember when I heard about an incident in which the Representative from Georgia, Cynthia McKinney, was accused of hitting a police officer as she was trying to enter the Capital building in Georgia. I didn't take much note of it, thinking she must be some kind of crazy woman. It was only recently that I found out she was one of the first politicians to voice her concerns about the official explanations concerning the events of 9/11. An article by Greg Palast better describes the series of taints she has endured at the hands of the US administration and media. (http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=229). At least she has fared better than Senator Paul Wellstone who died, along with his family in a mysterious crash in October, 2002. He had been an outspoken critic of the administration and was opposed to George W. Bush's call for Congressional authorization to "use all means" against Iraq.
Recently I was somewhat startled when our own Rex Murphy, the renowned CBC pundit, aired a bitter and vicious attack against those who would dare to consider anything but the official explanation for the events surrounding 9/11. His frothy diatribe described the beliefs of 9/11 conspiracy truth seekers as "pernicious concoctions of minds allergic to reality, and are beneath the dignity of reasoning human beings." (http://www.cbc.ca/national/rex/rex_060912.html) The over riding theme of this rant was to paint a picture of people who question the circumstances surrounding this terrible incident as loonies and fringe elements who are sinister conspiracy mongers. I would have expected this from FOX news but the CBC? Perhaps the winds of change that have blown into parliament with the squeaker election of a Conservative government have affected the tone of the CBC's newscast's as well.
IAMC
5 years ago
Nana; give it up. You are only influencing weak minds, that are rare here, so I don't know who you think you are talking to.
You are delusional. Take a check on your prescriptions. Your meds may be off.
You are not convincing in any way shape or form. You are obviously so biased, that there isn't much credibility in your postings.
The website of Popular Mechanics explains all of this in a simple logical manner.
Nana Nana , hey hey hey, goodbye.
I think Nana is a person under sixteen.
It must be.
KitsCommuter
5 years ago
IAMC, your timing is impecable!
nightbloom
5 years ago
This interesting commentary taken from a review of Fukuyama's recent book. Note the reference to a new "paranoid style" in the blogosphere and on the Left (a point a brought up months ago in a similar debate):
Full review article here: http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25346-2367095,00.html
maestro
5 years ago
Back to a hopefully rational discussion.
( aka... We can also hopefully call a "truce" on pissing - matches)
I'm suprised that no-one picked up on this hint earlier
As the Friendly Giant ( a CBC neo-con )once said " Look up...look waaay up " at the photo of the WTC collapse just commencing at the TOP of this articles' page ,on the right hand side. To be honest I hadn't seen this photo before..
The photo has 3 main interesting facets . It appears to be taken just at the moment of the structural failure of one of the WTC towers. (i)The lower portion is still basically intact, the middle section has both black smoke emanating in an upward sense, and (ii)the white dust below it being apparently forced downward and out the side....
Note facet(iii), the upper portion of the building still relatively intact,like a huge CUBE but has a PRONOUNCED LEAN, indicating a major detachment occuring as a result of the destruction of the supportive/connective WTC building floors immediately below it, where the planes hit.
Notice the lack of visual evidence of metal shearing squibs etc others claim were there or must be there.
This huge leaning CUBE is not falling over the edge of the building...it is now about to create some momentum like a slow motion pile driver.. with one corner/side pointing inward like a wedge .....correct? Major PSI !
As I mentioned before, the documentaries
showed the WTC unique design. It apparently had a major exoskeleton of steel on its exterior walls that bore much of the weight of the interior floors. The documentaries I saw stated the designers were seeking very open floor plans, with very little if any vertical support in the MIDDLE areas.
Steel web -style trusses spanned these open areas and connected to the (i) Exoskeleton at ONE end ...and (ii) to the central core at the OTHER end .
When the massive upper cube I mentioned earlier began to separate,it fell towards the center of the building. Think of a trampoline that gave in due to excessive forcs. The WTC center area simply had steel trusses not meant to bear extreme weight, they failed (my previous HINT HINT in earlier blog re SAVE ON FOOD collapse).
The steel floor trusses ONE end were attached to the outer steel exoskelton....as the trusses couldn't hold the weight of the pull of the collapsing "intact massive upper section" CUBE. These floor trusses, as they were pulled were now also pulling the external walls inward like a person jumping on a trampoline exerts forces on the weaker middle yet also pulls on the outer edge till it can't withstand it...or a spider web center pull effect as another example.
This CUBE either catalyzed the pancaking process , or continued like a slow moving wrecking ball pounding on every floor with its ever accerelating momentum till it hit the ground.
Remember that multi story trellis look of the steel that survived after the collapse ? Probably from the top section "CUBE" that collapsed onto the lowers sections in pancake fashion...and disintegrated on final impact with the ground.
If the WTC had had no open space plan, but had in fact more verticle columnar support in the middle areas, it may have been able to withstand or resist the total and complete collapse.
It ended up much like squashing a bug...not much strength in the middle.
When you see Hi-Rise construction in Vancouver , the exterior walls don't bear weight...the glass etc is installed later...unlike the WTC exterior walls which were crucial, but failed hence collapsed.
Anyway, that's my "theory" , have another look at the photo above at the top.
Truman Green
5 years ago
Some more of your belittling the disbeliever instead of examining what we disbelieve, eh Nightbloom.
Conspiracies happen. Colin Powell at the UN lying to the world about nukes in Iraq was part of a conspiracy.
Operation Northwoods was a conspiracy.
Bush linking 911 to Iraq was part of a conspiracy.
Lynden Johnson claiming North Vietnam fired on American warships in the Gulf of Tonkin was part of a conspiracy; it was a pretense to get more involved in Vietnam. This little farce directly and indirectly lead to millions of unnecessary deaths and maimings--probably even to Pol Pot's slaughtering millions of people to put in place his private little fantasy of a Cambodia with only 1,000,000 hand-picked feudal slaves.
That was Pol Pot's conspiracy, to kill 7 of the 8 million Cambodians because they didn't fit in with his plans.
Rwanda was a conspiracy by the Hutus to completely kill off the Tutus so their elite class could have more German luxury cars.
Mobutu in Zaire was a conspiracy.
Patrice Lumumba's murder was a conspiracy; to destroy nascent democracy in Africa so that Western nations could exploit Africa's natural resource wealth.
Apartheid was a conspiracy to keep black people as kitchen and farm servants in their own nation.
Conspiracies have occurred all throughout history.
What do you suppose Eisenhower was talking about when he tried to warn about the military industrial complex?
Do you think he hadn't felt its sting?
If you don't know, I'll tell you. He thought maybe people with a vested interest in war might use trickery to keep nations at each other's throats so they could sell their death machines and currency entitlements and reap the benefits.
Does the military industrial complex love war? You bet!
Slavery was a conspiracy.
The War On Terror is part of a conspiracy.
Here's how I got suspicious of 911:
I looked at the videos of the buildings coming down and I thought: Damn, that doesn't look right. Where's the energy coming from to do that? Gravity's by far the weakest of the four forces of nature.
Why did the top 34 floors turn into dust like that? Kerosene loses its energy in minutes when it explodes. Paper and rug fires don't destroy steel columns.
Gravity doesn't blow things up.
I disbelieve the HIV/AIDS hypothesis because it doesn't look right to me. Rabbits don't kill foxes. Retroviruses don't kill an immmunological army arrayed against them. They're practically inert after their first pathetic attack. This is what retroviruses do: Practically nothing. Sombody's lying! It's a conspiracy.
This is why we have brains. To try to figure out what's going on and who's lying.
People tell lies. Constantly.
Conspiracies happen. You're involved in a conspiracy right now; to denigrate sincere people who don't believe the official stories, and you're in cahoots with Matthew Rothschild and Rex Murphy, who are working for the people who love war.
Intellectualize that!
Coyote
5 years ago
While I have much been an admirer of Chomsky, and have read a number of his books, he nonetheless very often does display, in my read of him, a certain naivete about the importance of US "rich man controlled" democracy. Indeed, I still much admire Chomsky, which doesn't mean he need or should be elevated to the level of a God who has no faults. (There is no such, of course. And old Chomsky has lived a pretty materially comfortable life-, which doubtless effects his intellectual vision to some degree.)
Likewise, no doubt in my view, there is a tendency amongst many on the left, especially who earned their wings out of the time of the Vietnam War and have been around a long time, to create a "cult of the personality" around themselves, whether that is their intent or not. (To which I should hasten to add, such as myself, before somebody else doesL For that is the time that much shaped my thinking as well.) Likewise to think they have come down from the mountain with the stone tablets containing the final word.
Surrendering to such a tendency needs to be resisted. It is, in fact, an old tendency that has been around, to my experiential knowledge, at least since the time of Stalin.
While there is a place for history and tradition on the left, even that which is destined to re-emerge in this rather newer fascistic neoconservative time, I think there is a need on the part of this newer and younger left much, to be prepared to start and rebuild anew. The old left, which includes Social Democracy, and the trade union movement, wound up in the post war making a whole number of compromises with "the system", which largely had the effect of "co-opting" it and tying it, again regardless of even good intention, to the status quo and capitalism, and its tunnel vision view of an overly "formalized" and actually unreal, restricted notion of what constitutes democracy.
This social and class war against capitalism has been going on for a long time, and has a ways to run yet, and over that course activists can and do become tired and allow themselves to wittingly and unwittingly slip into "surrender patterns" of behaviour. It is what has largely happened already to the left and labour social and political party movements of this country, in my view. And it is the reason the social, economic based, and political movement of the peoples and the left likely need to be rebuilt in their near entirety from the ground up in this country.
Which complicates our capacity to effectively respond to a fast becoming serious betrayal of the country to the US Empire by our neoconservative US Empire Loyalists, and engagement of the nation as a vassal state in that imperial power's Never Ending War view of the world.
Which is the long way round of saying, I agree much with your assessment of the so-called, but accurately defined Left Gatekeeper theory, Nana. Only pointing out to you that there is no gate that is so high or so wide that it cannot be overcome, where there is a will of sufficient mass to do so. :-) And young radicals arriving at political and social consciousness need to be aware of this, and not allow themselves to be intimidated-, not only by those on the right. (These guys all put their pants on one leg at a time too.) :-)
Make your own relevant creation for this new time.
BC Dude
5 years ago
9/11 was the greatest USA inside snowjob in their history! For what? The 2nd installment of The Corporate Militerization of the OUR WORLD
Another good docu DVD "Why We Fight"!
Sorry bout all the sites but the full truth is vvery evident!
http://www.v911t.org/SergeantLauroChavez.php
http://911independentcommission.org/questions.html
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14958.htm
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6986678451215563453
Nana
5 years ago
Maestro
The problem with your theory is...why did the cube right itself? It should have fallen off to the side. Why did the cube disintegrate into dust? Why did both buildings disintegrate into dust. Where are the chunks. No building, let alone two, has ever collapsed from the top down that way before.
Pancaking would have taken far more time than 11 seconds....at least 90. This is well covered in 911 Mysteries.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6708190071483512003
A detailed debunking of the NIST report may be found at:
http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/nist/index.html#conclusion
Working Man
5 years ago
Coyote, your attention is truly flattering but I think you are either getting a little too medicated or along it years to make much sense anymore.
Keep it coming, though. I look forward to my morning laugh.
alive
5 years ago
Truman Green, Nana and others:
We are wasting our time here!
The people who keep looking for a way to verify the "official story" are the same bunch who did not want to "waste" 2 hours viewing the full video.
Instead they waste even more time trying to refute something they have not even seen!
A closed mind is a wasted mind!
Let them flab their gums as much as they want; eventually the truth will be recognized.
KitsCommuter
5 years ago
alive, can this be true? Surely before these people have posted they took the time to view the information that is available on the web regarding alternate views as to how and why the WTC Towers came down that day. IAMC, Working Man, maestro, Clear Cut, nightbloom, you have reviewed this information before posting, right?
BC Dude
5 years ago
Working Man here is a great piece of advice!
A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot
survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for
he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst
those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the
alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor
appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he
wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies
deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works
secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he
infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murder is less
to fear: Cicero Marcus Tullius
Truman Green
5 years ago
Maestro you wrote, "The documentaries I saw stated the designers were seeking very open floor plans, with very little if any vertical support in the middle area."
VERY LITTLE IF ANY VERTICAL SUPPORT IN THE MIDDLE AREA, you say!
Trust me, maestro, such a building would never have been built, because any bright grade school kid walking by the construction site would have reported it to his/teacher and the engineers would have been fired, not to mention barred from their profession and tarred and feathered.
There's one thing wrong with this: It's not true.
There were 47 massive spaced steel columns rectangularly surrounding the vertical core interior of the buildings. All of the FEMA and NIST engineers concluded that they would have withstood the dead and dynamic loads if the fires hadn't weakened them.
But is this true? Did the fires destroy the redundant structural integrity of the interior and exterior columns?
Go here: http://physics911.net/stevenjones.htm
There's a photo of the interior and exterior columns on this site--during construction.
maestro
5 years ago
" N "
Let's quit the chain YANKEE'in
Given the photo..AND AGAIN...... THE WAY THE WTC WAS DESIGNED...(Yawwwnnnnnn )..and what the TYEE photo reveals ,it makes even more sense.
The only way I can see the building NOT collapsing is the extremely low probability that ithe "joint venture" conspiracy went perfectly....ie the (i)hijacked plane and the (ii) " phantom squib crew" timing resulted in a perfect screw - up.
By that I mean a perfect 100% level collapse whereby the remaining upper portion of the buildingie "CUBE" landed exactly and directly on the intact portion below, ie "corner- met- corner" , and the steel exoskeleton directly below absorbed the entire shock like a shock absorber and distributed the resulting stress to resist and stop the otherwise inevitable collapse.
HOWEVER..Extremely low probability, given several floors were struck by the plane and thus the CUBE began to achieve momentum via a literal "free fall " before it hit the lower more intact portions. Then the pancaking etc. occurred with everything continually "pulled into the center " like an inverted cone..., hence the seemingly perfect collapse.
The outer walls simply contained things till they themselves were pulled inward by the weaker internal center area collapse which was started and continued by the big CUBE etc.moving from top to bottom.
The CUBE I referred to is not going to right itself. It likely acheived a downward lean due to a collapse of one side more than the other....ie imbalance due to the non-perfectly synchronized joint venture by the (i)plane hijackers and the (ii) " phantom squib team " . (Yeah right)!
Some of you seem to think these terrorists live in tents and drive to work on camels...many of these are very highly educated individuals albeit political zealots. They likely had all sorts of intelligence data on the WTC, how it was built...etc. I wouldn't be surprised if they had AND used a computer model on what was the tragic " best -bang -for- the -buck " area to hit to ensure WTC collapse, with a big + / - factor as well .
Geez ...many of us grew up on conspiracy theories...especially JFK. Why do some of you bloggers think you have the one and only monopoly on conspiracy theories? Ya think that those will ever stop...? Anyone can grab a few facts and spin them into a thesis...that's what conspiracy theories are all about.
The WTC had planes hit towers,...thats the GIVEN. HOWEVER If the planes had hit the top UPPER floors,,ie 110 storey building....and the planes hit say the 105 th floor or higher , I really doubt the buildings would have come down, via less mass = less force of the falling law -of -gravity compliance by the CUBE. Then we'd see the "squib theory" etc. maybe possibly kick -in if they did have squibs or other conspirators involved elsewhere.
The rest of the " it wasn't JUST the planes " conspiracy theory is a real stretch .
My own personal take so far on JKF is the Mafia was involved...given 40+ years and all the evidence and views that have come out. Yet...the Jury is STILL out on that . Most of the circumstantial evidence etc. points in THAT direction re JFK , but I feel 100% assured that some TYEE bloggers will find some stretch to claim Dubya pulled the trigger because JKF was a Democrat,( yet , ironically also a bit of a war monger too when he wasn't helping M.M. with her acting lessons).
Clear Cut
5 years ago
KitsCommuter, you ask: "IAMC, Working Man, maestro, Clear Cut, nightbloom, you have reviewed this information before posting, right?"
I'm offended by this question. If you review the three posts I have contributed to this discussion (excluding this one), the extent of my research is evident. Is this demeaning insinuation the result of you being unable to find flaws in my logic, arguments or conclusions?
Truman Green
5 years ago
Maestro, you believe that the cube having broken off and tilted created the dynamic force to crash down through the entire building, or at least to start a chain reaction of pancaking.
You're right; this IS the theory of the collapse of the south tower. Besides being nonsense, it doesn't seem to bother the true believers that this didn't happen to the north tower; and it collapsed, too, in the same 9.2 seconds.
And the big joke is that wtc7 came down exactly like the other two, although it had no broken cube of the floors crashing through the floors beneath them; no airplanes crashing into it; no bizarre top-down collapse.
Starting to get my point?
If you're going to have an identical defining event (the near free-fall collapse of the 3 buildings), you're going to need a consistent, global, hypothesis to explain all three.
In other words, what defining or global circumstance approaches the consistency required to account for the near identical collapses of all three buildings?
Nana
5 years ago
Maestro
You win, you got me to spend all this time and energy arguing a point that is based on a faulty premise i.e. that the fires were hot enough to bend the steel that would then cause the cube to start the pancake.
We've already established that the fires weren't hot enough to even cause the cube to form, let alone start a catastrophic cascade. You can't get around two physical imposibilities.
1. Fires not hot enough.
2. Floors fell around freefall speed.
Spend some time really examining the evidence available at
http://www.st911.org/
maestro
5 years ago
TG
Thanks for another link.
Upon review...its still contradictory logic.
Start with a GIVEN ..did the (2) planes hit the WTC building ?
YES !
If the (2) planes did NOT hit the WTC buildings, would they have still collapsed that 9/11 day?
I TRULY doubt it.
We are implying a secondary conspiracy crew was either in place to either assist the WTC collapse, or the hijacked planes were an excuse to mask the THERMITE or SQUIBS etc.
The "Squib /thermite " etc. conspiracy experts continually say " SEE THE SQUIBS shooting out from X point of the building ....blah blah VERSUS saying things like " these possibly look like squibs ..or act like squibs "...thus exhibiting tunnel vision and thus the credibility becomes increasingly shot.
Who ever said the burning jet fuel melted the WTC structural metal? ...heat affects metal...you don't have to melt metal to weaken it..correct? Ever see a fire and how metal warps and twists?
When buildings are demolished via explosives...they are literally gutted, especially the glass. Ever been to the Vancouver building demolitions? . I've personally attended two.
There is nothing left but a gutted shell. Every support is looked at as potential point of demolition resistance.
Yes, I knew the WTC had a center core(elevator shafts) and an outer shell.... N showed that earlier. Given the WTC windows are in place, unlike most PLANNED demolitions...if squibs or thermite were going off in synchronized fashion...where are the shock waves blowing out all the windows ?
The "structural integrity" arguments which seem to claim it couldn't be the hijacked planes alone do not themselves have a valid explanation why the structure failed...they seem to imply that THEREFORE precluding lighting fast cutting torches ..it must be squibs or other explosives etc. by default ? Poor logic .
If it can only be squibs , surely some evidence must have been found...ie faulty squibs that never went off.?? I recall hearing body parts found on surrounding buildings that were discovered months later.
Hot metal in the basement arguments were noted by firemen...gee heard of " insulated" via the layers of debris covering them ??
re Explosives...gee, they sure caught Timothy McVey early on that when he blew up that US federal building. Are you implying squibs and thermite can be readily bought at Wal Mart...if so,..what section ???
Re EXPERTS: We haven't even solved the big leaky condo conspiracy in BC, though that's not a very difficult one to figure out if one really opens one's eyes.
Its good for experts to play Devils advocate , but after that..it gets a bit into "publish or perish " conspiracy mode
Truman Green
5 years ago
Do you realize that 3 buildings came down, Maestro?
You write: "If 2 planes had not hit the buildings would they have collapsed that day?"
"I truly think not," you say.
Well, zero planes hit WORLD TRADE CENTRE NUMBER THREE (3), AND IT COLLAPSED THAT DAY.
Do you not understand that this reasoning tends to diminish the validity of your own theory that planes caused the collapse?
And you insist on claiming that the core structure of the buildings was comprised of elevator shafts.
This is not true!
THERE WERE 47 INTERIOR COLUMNS ARRANGED IN A RECTANGLE WITH THE PERIMETER COLUMNS PARALLEL TO THE OUTSIDE WALL PERIMETER SUPPORT COLUMNS.
The trusses go from the interior rectangle to the exterior rectangle.
The open office space floor plans, which you correctly identified as a design feature, were derived from the fact that the trusses extended 60 feet from the inside rectangle of columns to the perimeter columns.
I'm starting to wonder if you've studied the structural layout of the buildings, M.
KitsCommuter
5 years ago
I have read your previous posts to this article Clear Cut. Nowhere do I find any indication that you have reviewed any of the so called 9/11 conspiracy sites. If you have, please indicate which ones and be a little more specific in your criticisms of their hypotheses.
The theories you have trotted out, although worth consideration, seem quite implausible to me. You contend that "the rocket fuel that wasn't burned off on impact leaked down about 25 floors, pooled up in the lobby where it washed up some aerosol cans before making its way to the next set of elevators, continuing the process until it found its way to the basement where it was ignited (probably by a careless smoker or someone who didn't completely put out a campfire) and the ensuing explosion melted some supporting steel and down came the building." Were you making a joke? Without wanting to offend, I have to say this is the silliest explanation I have ever heard for the demise of the twin towers on 9/11. Please don't embarrass yourself any further by posting such nonsense.
Throughout your posts, you refer to those who don't abide by the officially sanctioned explanations of the WTC collapse as, "anti-Semites", "nutty conspiracy theorists", "whiners". As I pointed out in my second post, it is a common tactic to label and defame those whose arguments you can't counter.
You contend that "Debating these lunatic theories only gives them credibility". I haven't seen you doing much debating. Just winging out your own ideas without much evidence to support them. "We're busy people we working men - it's much better to just cut to the chase and weigh in with a strong opinion." , however flawed and unsupported those opinions may be.
Nana
5 years ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Center#The_Twin_Towers
Notice the illustration on the right of "A typical floor layout and elevator arrangement of the WTC towers."
and labled System Design Concept
Click to enlarge and notice that the central columns take up more tha 1/4 of the space and are placed in a rectangle. As a spindle, not so good!
Truman Green
5 years ago
Lets back up for a bit from the columns and floor plans. Let me ask you, Maestro, or anyone...Let's assume that Al Queda terrorists DID hijack the planes and fly them into the buildings.
Do you think they had it all figured out that this action would collapse the buildings?
And:
What do you suppose was their intention regarding the 47 story number 7 building, which also collapsed?
Do you think they thought falling debris from the south tower would cause number 7 to collapse?
Truman Green
5 years ago
Exactly, Nana. I was trying to find a floor plan to post!
Truman Green
5 years ago
And so, Maestro, read from Nana's Wikipedia link:
"The central core took the majority of the gravity loads of the building."
And:
"The core supported the weight of the entire building."
And maybe think about trying not to post INACCURATE information such as your statement:
"...the designers were seeking very open floor plans with very little if any vertical support in the middle areas."
Because we're trying to honestly figure out what happened here, and your disinformation is highly unethical.
But I agree IF the information you posted regarding the structural design was accurate, it would account for the collapse of the buildings.
Clear Cut
5 years ago
KitsCommuter,
It would be unethical to take credit for the theory of aerosol cans and jet fuel washing down the elevator shafts and causing explosions throughout the building: I was paraphrasing Maestro's well-reasoned hypothesis.
But, in the end, ask yourself, do you really think that the US Government would go through the time and expense of publishing an official report if it were not true?
Nana
5 years ago
OH,Clear Cut, I weep at your sweet, earnest naivete'.
Truman Green
5 years ago
Did he really write that?
Truman Green
5 years ago
That was excellent, Clear cut. Thanks for the joke, but now I've got sore ribs from laughing. Oh, I forgot to answer.
Yes.
The brain
5 years ago
Well, I think I'll take a stab at some ameteur sleuthing of the events that tumbled the twins.
When one asks, "Geez, how did you drive your forearm through all of those stacked boards and bricks?" the answer comes quickly. Momentum.
With the twins, the planes hit with how many stories above the initial floors that were structurally comprimized by the crash itself? There is a strong possibility that the gravitational potential of the upper floors weight above the area damaged by the planes, would be enough to pancake the floors below the one to two floors that gave away initally, with momentum.
The main questions we should be asking are:
- how fast is mass going from zero to 9 feet (assuming each story is 9 ft high and the mass we are talking about is the stories above plane impacts on wtc1 & 2)
- how fast is a 30 story building travelling after a 2 story plunge?
- how long does it take for a heavy object (like the top section above the plane impact) to reach free fall?
- what speeds does mass or mass potential need to reach to create a building "pancake effect" like we saw in the video's of 911?
Silly me, I'm good with questions, but the best I can do with answers, is MOMENTUM.
alive
5 years ago
commentor: The brain
please do not embarrass yourself now!
The brain
5 years ago
When I think of the impact of the planes, I'm immediately thinking of just how much damage an exploding plane mostly fueled would cause on two or three floors, and to that end, I really don't know. Is it 10, 20, 25% structural damage?
And how much damage could there be done by fires for how many feet, especially the core... I guess I'd have to ask, what kind of structural damage would it take to collapse a full floor or two of wtc1 & 2?
And to that end, I don't know unless I looked at the floor plans on a structural level and even then... I'm an amateur, a novice forced to take an educated guess on what it would take. Would a planner, perhaps a master planner ask what it would take? Most certainly.
I don't think like a terrorist, but there's nothing wrong with putting a guard up with a little role playing. 911 was no act of God. It was an act of terrorism, but by who? (Its not what you know but who you know, after all) And I'm no fool when it comes down to asking, "who benefits" and to that end, clearly, financially and to hold power, its Bush, Cheney and the U.S. military complex all the way.
And come to think of it, LB Johnson and his back in the day military complex were easy benefitiaries of the more peaceful, democratic Kennedies who for whatever reason, ended up assasinated...
KitsCommuter
5 years ago
Yes Clear Cut, I do. Remember that it took a great deal of coaxing to get any information out of the government. It was well over a year before the first 9/11 investigation was set in motion. I urge you to take a look at some of the sites that have been posted here. I think you may be surprised at the reasoned logic that you will run into. It has been a long road for me to accept a lot of the arguments put forth by alternate conspiracy theorists. Everything seemed so simple on that horrible day 5 years ago. The planes hit the buildings and they fell down. But my immediate thought was that they were demolished. How could that possibly be though? Who would do such a thing? No, it could only have been brutal terrorists. And so I thought until recently, (the past 6 months). It kept nagging me, how could they come down so quickly, collapsing into their own footprint so conveniently. Qui bono? All of the political events that have ensued, the Iraq war, the repeal of elements of the US Constitution due to the Homeland Security Act. It just doesn't fit. And so I started to dig, and the deeper I dug the more inconsistencies began to appear, cracking the thin veneer of the government's arguments. So I won't go on, but I really do think it imperative to explore these alternatives with an open mind. I would really find it quite ironic if, after having gained acceptance by more of the population, it will actually be anger from the right rather than from the left that will hasten the downfall of this despicable administration. We shall see how history will unfold.
Nana
5 years ago
Alive
I agree with your earlier posting. It has been established beyond doubt that the collapses were controlled demolitions.
I don't think some are arguing in good faith because anybody who can put sentences together on a website is surely smart enough to get that the arguments in support the official conspiracy theory are Swiss cheese.
I just watched a good video called One Nation Under Seige
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6986678451215563453
Wide ranging interviews on the implementation of the NWO Jim Marr, Joyce Reilly, Maj. Gen. Stublebine et al.
Working Man
5 years ago
Clear Cut, anybody not reciting the Off The Shelf Socialist Mantra here will be insulted and castigate ad nauseam. Fortnately, leftie-whack-job-cranks collectively work together and getting that message across, keeping them from power, assuring a measure of prosperity for the rest of us who can actually think for ourselves.
maestro
5 years ago
TG
Why did the Metro-Town Save On Foods store collapse ?
Recall what happened ?
Try to figure it out(hint :steel web trusses)...please do not try and read some CONSPIRACY theory.
While you are at it...what point is being made by the WTC conspiracy theorists re: G force acting on a collapsed building. It's almost like the conspiracy theorists are implying an accelerant to make a G force greater than ONE G ?
A squib /thermite crew may have SLOWED the WTC collapse down further for various reasons.
Conspiracy theories seem to be based on misdirection with NO answers to the evidence that actually exists.
The WTC conspiracy theory/s is implying that the upper WTC CUBE (ie the intact WTC portion above the plane crashes) and commencing its support-less G force collapse had the 2nd squib/thermite group in perfect seemless synchronicity setting off explosives to create a smooth resistance free (ie no stopping)collapse of the crucial structural components( ala like sh*t through a goose without any constipated hiccups).
Think avalanches videos...accelerated and smooth.
Of course, if the planes were delayed...the squib/thermite crew would have blown up the WTC buildings anyway...Yeah right! Then the hi-jackers would request refunds. Yeah right!
No one in the WTC who cell phoned loved ones noticed anyone or anything out of the ordinary in the building that day ?
OR...when the first plane hit...everyone thought it was a conspiracy and were looking for the squib /thermite crew in the other WTC tower...
(You mean no-one instantly thought this wasn't
a COMBINED hijacked plane and squib thermite group in the 2nd TOWER at the ready....waiting for the 2nd plane ???)
As I said earlier, the squib/thermite 2nd conspiracy etc theory for building collapse holds up as a remote possibility if the planes hit maybe the upper 5 %....ie the 105 storey out of 110 storey building...my premise being there was perhaps not enough weight and momentum to pancake the lower areas.
Proof of planes,that's a given ....and the planes did it,that's all the evidence suggests, and not much else.
Working Man
5 years ago
It was all a conspiracy, dammit! It had nothing to do with the insufficient size of the steel beams in the roof. If fact, Evil Bill Vanderzalm was premier at the time and he personally ordered the architect to do it on pain of death. Of course, Billy was kind of dolt and forgot his Buddy Pattison ran the place but it was an NDP riding so that was sufficent reason for committing such a dastardly act!
Coyote
5 years ago
Working Man So-Called,
Rather, it is such as yourself and Clear Cut Intellectually, who buy into every US Soviet Capitalist State explanation. The questioning, critical and analyzing minds here are certainly not the likes as yourselves. You are the intellectual plodders, forever beholden to the status quo party line.
You've got nobody fooled here but yourselves.
On the other hand,
It has been a highly informative delight to read the challenging, thoughtful and highly curious minds of such as Nana, Truman Green, and Kits Commuter (who has actually pleasantly shocked me) and many other less quick to be duped views around this "conspiracy" issue. Indeed, it has become clearer to me over the course of this discussion that it is such as Rothchild and the dominant Neocon opinion here, who are the duped part of this Bushwhacked conspiracy.
I have learned more about the collapse of the Twin Towers and the controversial "conspiracy" issues surrounding this entirely "possibly", even "likely" burning of the Reichstag event, than I had just more or less assumed casually over the time since I first watcned the collapses on TV.
Thanks, you guys. Indeed, even the incompetent "faith based, rote acceptance of the "official explanations" by the Neocon "true believers" here, has been instructional and enlightening-, in a negative way.
KitsCommuter
5 years ago
I heard it was because the new employees were threatening to unionize ;-) Ol' Jimmy wanted to take em out in one fell swoop. Nearly did too, that crafty bugger!
Working Man
5 years ago
Coyote, you flatter and amuse me the the greatest degree. Keep it comin'!
Working Man
5 years ago
Remember Granny from the Beverly Hilbillies? Do you pattern yourself after her, coyote?
KitsCommuter
5 years ago
If coyote is patterning himself after Granny, Working Man, then you most assuredly must be Jethro Bodine!
Nana
5 years ago
Coyote
I found this interview with Norman Finklestein giving his opinions on Chomsky,
Christopher Hitchens, Israel/US relations ( I think he said they are too far intertwined to be able to tell them apart and that essentialy it's all about international mobsters making deals) and the Neocons called Straussians My Behind.
http://pittsburgh.indymedia.org/news/2004/10/15703.php
Working Man
5 years ago
I did indeed graduate from the sixth grade. A few others, too.
alive
5 years ago
Interesting how nobody wants to comment on how the third tower collapsed all by itself!
Maybe it was the momentum from the 2 other towers?
Nor has anyone commented on that hole in the Pentagon!
How did that plane manage to send out a "friendly" signal, and avoid being shot down?
Guess you have not figured any reasonable explanation, except Pattisons roof?
Truman Green
5 years ago
Okay, Maestro, I'll give you credit for at least having studied the collapse theory.
However, here's what's wrong with it.
The pile-driver part of the theory is that the section of the building above the impact site, by virtue of the dynamic forces of velocity and density, from a single story fall, began a dominoing or pancaking of the building below the impact.
The gravitational energy by itself, could not have overcome the resistance of the remaining structure unless the steel columns had been weakened by the heat of the fires.
Regardless of whether the fires and plane impact could have weakened the columns near the crash site, the mass of the columns all the way to the ground would have created an energy wick, heat sink or heat absortion mass due to the excellent conductivity of steel. As steel or anything else absorbs heat that heat must be reduced as a direct ratio of the distance it travels from the source.
The Nist report ignores this, which is possibly its "smoking gun" omission.
Next, the mass of the building above the impact, even if it was sufficient to cause the failures of weakened columns at the impace site, was not available to create the piledriving effect because it was pulverized by some unknown cause as it came into contact with the intact building.
Pulverized material tends to lose its pile-driving capability.
It is most likely that when the impact of the upper floors contacted the intact building, the gravitational force would have merely been transferred to the ground, and the upper floors would have either remained in place atop the intact building or toppled to the ground themselves, depending on the amount of distance from verticality they had attained.
The Nist report made no attempt to calculate the energy that would have been delivered by the upper floors falling on to the intact building.
And this is essential for the believability of the pile-driving theory.
KitsCommuter
5 years ago
Glad to hear it. Must have been quite a challange for you ;-)
The brain
5 years ago
alive:
Nobody wants to comment on wtc7? I've said plenty. I believe debris was the answer you gave for its fall, but I've yet to find anything myself online to support your claim.
Truman Green
5 years ago
alive, I've mentioned the third building several times. It's the conventionalists who tend to abhor the fact of the collapse of wtc7, because it tends to destroy their entire theory.
If you scroll back you'll see that I challenged Maestro several times to even ADMIT that a third 47 story building came down.
Its collapse began at its base. Nobody challenges this. And it wasn't hit by a plane, but apparently falling debris from the South Tower brought it down.
Maestro, can you say the words: "WORLD TRADE CENTRE BUILDING NUMBER SEVEN COLLAPSED ON September 11, 2001.
The stark improbability of wtc7 collapsing for totally different reasons on the same day--even in the same city--strains the imagination of even those who are totally unschooled in the science of probabilities.
The fantastic acausal synchronicity of it must seem positively chilling.
As I said on another thread, it must have just collapsed out of sympathy for its two colleagues.
Working Man
5 years ago
Life support. Thread dying
Nana
5 years ago
Oh, how you guys give yourselves away. Hitler had his Brown Shirts, Mussolini liked Black and Mulroney had White Shirts.
Working Man
5 years ago
Seig Heil, nana!
Nana
5 years ago
WM
Did you want Canadian participation in Iraq?
KitsCommuter
5 years ago
Don't want to leave this thread on a sour note. Hope you weren't offended by my banter Working Man. I'm sure you were well schooled and indeed must have an iq well beyond your shoe size. Just need to look at the world from a few different perspectives that's all.
BC Dude
5 years ago
Why is the thread dying wm? Just because you say it is, hummm maybe you just can't absorb all the real facts!
AN INSIDE Massacre for an excuse for war!
The wtc7 was the main base for the CIA, FBI, all the so called protectors of the free(?) world
and ultimately all the secret files of the Cheney,Rummy, Bush war criminals
Republicans, Democrates same pile of BULL S--t!
Working Man
5 years ago
Nut job alert.
lynn
5 years ago
But Rothchild's argument, interestingly enough, works just as strongly against the alternative view: that 9/11 was masterminded by Osama bin Laden. And while never said out loud, it's clear the view of a plot by Osama bin Laden and al Quaeda has all the hallmarks of a conspiracy theory as well. It, too, involves a small cabal, indeed, a single individual, masterminding a vast chain of complex events. Why is this so easily believable?...and yet the very same people find it so unbelievable that Bush and Co could carry this out when they have so much more technology and power available at their command?
How can you at least not seriously question the events of that day?
Nana
5 years ago
Good points lynn
Since the war game/drills were taking place and the usual standing orders on interception had been changed by Rumsfeld in June '01 so that permission to scramble had to come from on high, there was no great need of personel there, just someone not to pass the message on to the militaryfrom the FAA in time
Only the pre-planting of the explosives in the buildings needed a number of people.
Steven Jones figured 40 people could have done the job of moving in the explosives over a weekend. William Rodrigues said that at least 2 whole floors had been empty in his building for a while. Others spoke about cement dust found in their offices for 2 weeks before 9/11.
Oportunity was certainly there.
alive
5 years ago
Brain, You seem to rely on your memory a lot, too bad it is faulty!
That tower came down exactly as the other two, by demolition charges, and unaided by any airplanes!
Besides nobody has yet tried to explain how that plane avoided being shot down, or how it managed to squeeze in through an opening much smaller than it size?
Nobody said you have to make a comment on every issue brain, but when you do, please do not rely on your memory, or your assumptions
Alcibiades
5 years ago
you know Working Man, it's actually you and climber who do nearly all the name calling around here. At least it's you who start it. I don't have a horse in this race and I've just taken a moment to look at a few posts. This it the kind of thing you seen wont to write:
I'm not sure You can think for yourself, but you sure can handle the ad hominem lever. I think your thesis is a pretty good case of the post calling the kettle black.
nightbloom
5 years ago
Cardinal Pell (Australia) weighs in with this reasoned commentary: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20876,20434235-7583,00.html
Note the monumental irony that it is now the churchmen giving lessons to the a supine and petrified mainstream society (and press) on the virtues of free inquiry, rational thought, and open dialogue. I have yet to see a single "pop media" personality provide anything of the same substance or ethical integrity.
nightbloom
5 years ago
...And note that even this reasoned invitation to dialogue was condemned. Particularly archetypal of this pattern is the fact that the Islamist head of a government-appointed and funded Muslim "reference group" publicly attacked the Cardinal's comments as 'dangerous' and an invitation to more violence...the irony never ceases...
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-09-19T082954Z_01_SYD238846_RTRUKOC_0_UK-POPE-ISLAM-AUSTRALIA.xml&archived=False&e=9797&sa=X&oi=news&ct=result&cd=2&sig=__GeDRvFrCqhccl1D0x511Zua1OvE=
Alcibiades
5 years ago
This is way off subject nighbloom. Still, there was a call from an important Muslim spokesman this morning for a reinvigorated and renewed dialogue between the church and Islam. I'm sorry I can't provide his name but I heard the story this morning on CBC.
climber
5 years ago
Alcibiades, why you so down on me, I call names less than some, more than some, nothing special. WM is kind of right, if someone doesn't follow the party line here (great example is logging) they are quickly labelled and slagged. Anyways, like I said earlier, the collapse of the towers so mimicked a controlled demolition that I knew something was wrong from the start. If they had fallen just a little sideways I wouldn't doubt the official line, but both of them? With my experience (construction, treework) I know things don't react like that, back to Kennedy, people shot in the back don't fly backwards, same kind of BS going on here.
Alcibiades
5 years ago
I'm actually not 'down' on you climber. In fact I like your honesty while I disagree with a lot of your conclusions. Nevertheless, I probably shouldn't have linked you to working man since the quotes I pulled out and quoted up above are actually all his work. The two of you seemed, at least on this question, to have formed an alliance of some sort and that's why I lumped you together.
As for the main question here, I've been clear from the start that I don't subscribe to the 'theory' that the buildings were destroyed by anything other than a series of catastrophic events set in train by the impact, at extremely high speed, of fuel-laden aircraft.
But, I don't dump on conspiracy theorists because I think they perform an important service in a free society. They permit and encourage radical thinking; they force thoughtful people to re-assess their prejudices and look at things in new and insightful ways.
By the way, Inquest: The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth, by Edward J Epstein is probably the best analysis of the Kennedy Assassination I've read. You might be interested - btw, he ends up believing in one assassin - Lee Harvey Oswald.
You can get a lot of other interesting stuff on line at:
http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/index.htm
maestro
5 years ago
To Working Man and KitsCommuter
Re the SAVE ON FOODS Collapse:
Congratulations !!!
AWESOME conspiracy theories errrrr " THE TRUTH "
We need to combine the two theories ..add some more mysterious linking facets...and then get an agent, write a book, or hire some bored PhD.s and auction off the movie rights.
Can we link the other FACT that there have been no more collapses since Jimmy Pattison hired that Ex BC Premier G.C. ,(besides Davey B. boy) who once lead a group of democratic socialists aka hypocrites many of whom live in expensive houses?
The prevailing hypocrite conspiracy theory is they run for Gov't......screw up the economy, then Jimmy gives them good paying Private Sector jobs to keep them out of trouble. I here BCTF head sent in her resume'
PS ya'all remember the old jokes "CAVE ON FOODS" or why its so cheap ie " LOWWWW OVERHEAD "
climber
5 years ago
Alcibiades, thanks for the link, I'll have to look at it more. In regards to Kennedy, he buys the single gunman (Oswald) shooting that old bolt action army rifle. Impossible to cycle the rounds so quickly, never mind hitting a moving target downhill. The time it takes to put rounds in the chamber has been proven impossible to the same timeline of shots that are the agreed facts.
Coyote
5 years ago
8-D. LOL. Good shot... at both of us.
Though indeed, I'd much prefer to be the tough old matriarch, Granny, who actually ruled the roost. :-D
Truman Green
5 years ago
Alcibiades, my take on Epstein is that he's just as much a "conspiracy theorist" as anyone.
Except that he tries to keep his name off the watchers' lists by feigning acceptance of the conventional explanations.
To wit: He sets up a website and presents one of the most UNKNOWN and sensitive of 911 circumstances:
That the US military had planned a so-called training exercise to simulate an attack by large planes on certain buildings near military bases.
And they had planned it to take place on 911.
And so the word, "weasel" might come into play here as an epithet for such an investigator.
Alcibiades
5 years ago
climber
Read the book. I started out thinking exactly the same thing you do – about Kennedy. Anyway, you know where I'm coming from and that I certainly don't buy into Truman and Nana's theses.
But, I'd hasten to add, a great deal of all of this is unknowable. For example, for more than 150 years it was generally and widely assumed that Napoleon died of stomach cancer on Elba. It now seems highly probable that he died of arsenic poisoning administered in this wine by the representative of a clique that wanted to restore the French royal dynasty.
Nana
5 years ago
Alci
I guess you missed this
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/mostread/s_467580.html
Old theory, new doubt
Alcibiades
5 years ago
Truman
I was using Epstein to respond to climber's point about the JFK assassination.
I've never said that there aren't a lot of unexplained things and unanswered questions about 9/11 and I think I've been pretty up front about not dissing the messengers. Up to this point, from my perspective, nothing has convinced me that the 'conventional' explanations are not mostly correct with respect to why the buildings fell. As to how the US got itself into this position and the irresponsible and opportunistic way it has behaved ever since - well, we don't disagree much on those points I'd assert.
There’s another piece in today's Washington Post about how much worse impact and possible effects of terrorism are now as opposed to five years ago. You can find it here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/23/AR2006092301130.html
Of course, it quotes America's already discredited spy agencies so maybe it's worthless too.
My major emphasis, if you’ll take the time to check, was to respond to working man’s usual intemperate tactics and not to cast aspersions on either your work, or nana’s.
Alcibiades
5 years ago
Nana
Nope, didn't miss it. What I've written above more or less stands.
Nana
5 years ago
Speaking of America's discredited spy agencies:
In other words, intelligence agencies, powerful business, drug traders and organized crime are competing for the strategic control over the heroin routes. A large share of this multi-billion dollar revenues of narcotics are deposited in the Western banking system. Most of the large international banks together with their affiliates in the offshore banking havens launder large amounts of narco-dollars.
This trade can only prosper if the main actors involved in narcotics have "political friends in high places." Legal and illegal undertakings are increasingly intertwined, the dividing line between "businesspeople" and criminals is blurred. In turn, the relationship among criminals, politicians and members of the intelligence establishment has tainted the structures of the state and the role of its institutions including the Military.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CHO20060921&articleId=3294
The Taliban's greatest crime was not sheltering OBL, but wiping out the poppy fields.
Nana
5 years ago
Another great mystery:
Why did the US plan to invade Afghanistan before9/11?
Alcibiades
5 years ago
Hell Nana, American culture is so thoroughly militarized that the Office of Plans in the Pentagon has a program for a probable invasion of practically every country - including Canada - on the table at all times.
I remember nightbloom who, although I think he has a burr under his saddle about the left, wrote about the fact that the US moved troops adjacent to the US northern border during the FLQ crisis in November of 1970.
I think it was his thesis (probably discussed at some war college seminar) that at least part of the reason Trudeau called out the troops in Ottawa and Montreal (which even resulted in firings of a teacher in, I think, British Columbia) was to forestall American action as much as it was to respond to a state of imaginary 'apprehended insurrection' in Quebec.
The news about Afghanistan is no surprise. In fact, as you no doubt know, I think there is every likelihood that the US would already have attacked (or acted through its mid-east proxy Israel) Iran if the Hezbollah 'war' hadn't turned out so badly.
I now see all kinds of other indications that the move may actually be coming next month.
What else is 'new'?
maestro
5 years ago
" TG "
Re Tower # 7
Sorry: but I am intentionally focussing my discussion on the larger Twin Towers.
I am into a " Devil's Advocate" debate with my TYEE colleagues, you included , on what I saw live on TV that morning as the story was occurring , the explanations THEN, the explanations NOW..., and how the blanks get filled in. Many comments submitted by TYEE bloggers are thought provoking, and invites a discussion/rebuttal.
Much of this should be in moot court mode. If there is no hard evidence of conspirators,witnesses, squibs, thermite, concurrent birth of the Anti - Christ,...etc. etc. the jury says it's no coincidence that the two planes happened to hit both WTC buildings yet the buildings were going to fall without the planes regardless = what a coincidence ???...OR gee if only one plane hit one WTC building and NOT the other yet if they both STILL collapsed hmmmm whats going on ???
JURY Says... " THE PLANES DID IT " !!
Many of us have seen conspiracy theories dissected...some questions get answered, some create more questions like Einstein's classic quote re answers can create more questions .
Its not much different than a magic act.
One says.... gee how did I MISS that!!! Very clever !
Same with conspiracy theories ...its like to be a good liar...one has to have a PERFECT Memory..or the truth will come out. I don't focus or even mention the #7 building, because I haven't seen much on it. Lets check the obituaries of all who died in the world that day....aka what's the actual evidentiary connection ??? Rest is just fodder for conspiracy tie - ins.
It seems this 9/11 discussion is masking a HATE-ON by many for Dubya and his policies, drawing a bow to connect to current world events. I never said Dubya didn't use 9/11 as a cause celebre' to go after Saddam and Afghanistan, etc. . However, to say that 9/11 is an "inside US job" is a REAL stretch.
One blogger above talked about Slavery. The official story re SLAVERY is that Old Abe Lincoln was a benevolent President with a civil rights agenda. It's also been said that by Abe's pro-active ANTI-SLAVERY was a strategic means to starve the South of its driving economic force...so that the North could more easily defeat the South. Then Abe was assassinated, another conspiracy gets rooted.
NOW;....Back to the (2) 100 + storey towers.....and their collapse
Nana
5 years ago
Sorry, forgot to post the link to the whole
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/preplanned.html
The stories about planning anti-Taliban action run from March of '01.
That summer was the first time the phrase "bomb you back to the Stone Age" was used...but it was said to the Taliban in regard to their giving permission for a pipeline to UNOCAL and Enron instead of ridas, an Argentine company.
"Laili Helms' liaison work for the Taliban paid off for Big Oil. In December 1997, the Taliban visited UNOCAL's Houston refinery operations. Interestingly, the chief Taliban leader based in Kandahar, Mullah Mohammed Omar, now on America's international Most Wanted List, was firmly in the UNOCAL camp. His rival Taliban leader in Kabul, Mullah Mohammed Rabbani (not to be confused with the head of the Northern Alliance Burhanuddin Rabbani), favored Bridas, an Argentine oil company, for the pipeline project. But Mullah Omar knew UNOCAL had pumped large sums of money to the Taliban hierarchy in Kandahar and its expatriate Afghan supporters in the United States. Some of those supporters were also close to the Bush campaign and administration. And Kandahar was the city near which the CentGas pipeline was to pass, a lucrative deal for the otherwise desert outpost."
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/MAD201A.html
Truman Green
5 years ago
Well, then, Maestro, maybe you should go do your investigation of why wtc7 came down.
Nana
5 years ago
Sorry, Maestro
You can't leave Building 7 out just because you haven't bothered to inform yourself.
http://www.wtc7.net/
http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/videos/index.html
There are many more sites you could find by just googling.
As to "hard evidence"...there is none for the official conspiracy theory. Even the FBI admits it doesn't have enough on OBL to put him on the 9/11 most wanted list.
I find you guy absolutely amazing. You have quite the double standard for evidence.
Alcibiades
5 years ago
The US Civil War was fought to preserve the Union - not end slavery. That the second result came about during the course of the America's bloodiest war ever is laudable. Lincoln was not an anti-slavery politician when the war began but he did campaign on the policy that slavery should not extend beyond the Southern states where it was already an acknowledged fact and especially into the western territories. It was to respond to what the Confederate States saw as Northern hegemony that started the secession movement from the Union - and the war began with the South shelling of Fort Sumter on April 10, 1861.
Beauregard who commanded the provisional Confederate forces at Charleston, South Carolina, requested the surrender of the Union garrison of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. When the request was rejected (the fort was not completed and poorly garrisoned) Beauregard had his batteries open fire on April 12. By mid-afternoon of the next day Anderson surrendered and evacuated the following day. It was the opening engagement of the American Civil War.
No conspiracy there.
Nana
5 years ago
Alci
I'm sure the US military has invasion plans on file for everywhere they think they have stategic interests, but there are two things you overlook, they were lining up support and as Tony Blair admitted, they needed the excuse provided by 9/11.
Nana
5 years ago
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/September2006/240906Griffin.htm
Video: David Ray Griffin in Copenhagen - 9-14-2006 1 hr.17 min
I'm listening now.
Alcibiades
5 years ago
Nana
As you know, and as I've said several times, I support what you're doing. I don't think I agree with some of your central premises but that's no reason to deny that looking into these things in a comprehensive way isn't important. To just call you and Truman names is ignorant and that was the point I was making above. I believe in free and open inquiry and I read and listen to everything on the issue that I have the time to do. Lately it hasn't been all that much.
If you recall my postings from last spring you'll remember that I have some technical knowledge and happen to have studied the towers fairly extensively in the mid 70s. They are the first and largest examples of a particular type of very light, open and flexible construction that is not being built - in precisely the same way - any longer. I think I went into it in a lot of detail at the time. So, that's all for me on the issue for the moment.
Anyway, nothing I've seen so far convinces me that I like the Bush White House any more and I'm no apologist for the mess they are (and Canada too) making of the world. You don't have to convince me that you reap what you sow and the West will be reaping for a long time.
Nana
5 years ago
Alci
I have problems with your seeming misunderstanding of basic physics.
The fires weren't hot enough and didn't last long enough to do anything. That has been established beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Griffin covers this at about 38 minutes into his lecture at the link above.
Truman Green
5 years ago
Alcibiades, may I suggest that you cut the crap. Your blanket denial is not particularly reputable unless you are prepared to bring your knowledge into the discussions.
I don't understand why you don't feel such an obligation in light of your claim that you are not convinced.
I've done my best to present my ideas and theories.
Now let's hear your rebuttals.
Otherwise, you're just blowing hot air, don't you think.
KitsCommuter
5 years ago
In your court maestro, it seems the verdict is rendered and then the evidence is submitted after the fact. Then only the evidence that supports the final verdict, (which has already been concluded) is considered and the rest discarded, or better yet, not even allowed to be submitted.
One of the biggest obstacles that stands in the way of people being able to accept, or to a least consider alternate theories about the 9/11 tragedy is the fact that they would then have to question whether their current government is actually what they believe it is. All of a sudden a whole new landscape of sinister intrigue is opened up and it is just too much for the average person to contemplate. A veritable "Heart of Darkness". So the mind recoils in horror and a door is slammed firmly shut. This is the only way I can explain the intransigence of those who will not even consider looking at what may be out there.
G West
5 years ago
Truman:
Truly, I don't have the time. I posted everything I had to say on this case last spring. I'm sure you remember. I am in the midst of a big job right now and I've taken half a day today to get caought up with other things.
Besides, I don't think it serves any useful purpose and no, I'm not blowing hot air. In my opinion.
I think my point of view is perfectly clear. Is it right? We just don't know, do we?
climber
5 years ago
http://www.ooze.com/articles/9-11-jokes.html Now for some well needed laughs.
Nana
5 years ago
Oh, my...
WSJ reporter, Busey?. sitting in office across from WTC2 testifies to seeing explosions coming from walls of building prior to collapse.
Griffin just rolls out the most amazing evidence.
Alcibiades
5 years ago
Truman my friend.
That was unnecessary. I'm sure you remember what I said last time this issue was front and centre. IN the end, there is no doubt that there are plenty of serious questions that need to be answered.
In quick order:
1. Planes struck the two towers; planes nearly full of fuel and travelling at a high rate of speed.
2. Effective firefighting was impossible.
3. The buildings were of light steel truss construction with corrugated steel floor pans covered with cast in place light gauge concrete.
4. Fire protection was minimal and of a type not well-suited to surviving a significant impact.
5. The building had a particularly flexible space frame structure and had a history of significant movement under wind loads.
6. The temperatures calculated during the fire are almost impossible to replicate or analyze.
7. The buildings did collapse.
8. Significant and independent professional testimony suggests that the collapse is not inconsistent with the evidence and our current understanding of the observed physical phenomena.
9. There is much more to understand and learn about the mechanisms that operated in situ on that day..
That's the quick version and all I have time for at the moment. WTC7 may well have been 'brought down' deliberately, I doubt it, but your arguments about the physical impossibility of observed phenomena are more logical in respect of that building because it did not suffer an impact commensurate with what happened in the towers.
KitsCommuter
5 years ago
Hmm, mostly in bad taste climber but I did get a chuckle out of Al Qaida's favorite football team. (The New York Jets)
Nana
5 years ago
ALCI
It's as though you haven't examined anything of the contrary evidence for anything on your list.
I cannot believe you haven't paid attention to the expert testimony presented by the 911 truth movement for which a number of us have provided links.
Is it that you fit the description provided by KitsCommander of intelligent person in denial.
because of fear the result of definitive proof of 9/11 being an inside job.?
Griffin talks about the rock and a hard place we are all in. I think he feels that if we don't expose this, we will lose the planet.
I urge you and GWEST to listen to his lecture when you have the time.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/September2006/240906Griffin.htm
Alcibiades
5 years ago
I've listened to it Nana - 9 minutes left!
Nevertheless, Nana, the opposite of what you post is also true. I'm not the least bit afraid of this being an inside job - nothing could make me think less of George Bush and his compromised crew. I don't have to turn them into villains of the same magnitude - in fact, greater magnitude - than Hitler - and that's what believing in what Griffin is saying to me means.
You'll note I already acknowledged that there may well be a case, unproved, to suggest that WTC7 was demolished...but, to place the whole event - WTC1 & 2 + WTC 7 as part of a huge government conspiracy at the highest level of the US administration requires an even greater supply of gullibility than I'm prepared to invest.
Look back at that stuff you posted a few days ago from the Stationary Engineers magazine. Some of those guys would have known the towers were wired and somebody would have talked. Nearly every one of the things in a huge chain if events that you have to connect to make these theories plausible can be explained or discounted in a perfectly credible way.
On the other hand, for your scenario to hold together, one has to make even more jumps of logic and entertain a conspiracy of world-historical proportions. I can't do it on the basis of what I know.
Governments and the military lie all the time to protect their asses and undoubtedly, they are doing so for a wide range of reasons in this case. However, lie to protect a government that would kill 3000 of its own innocent people - I don't think so. The torturers at Abu Ghraib couldn’t keep their act together over the torture of a few prisoners, do you think that anyone is capable of keeping the kinds of secrets that are required in order to keep such a conspiracy under wraps.
The minute a handful of ‘Deep Throats’ start talking to the modern version of Bernstein and Woodward I’ll consider switching my allegiance. In the mean time, keep it up without my concurrence.
Nana
5 years ago
Why is information from an an Unknown Source hiding behind a pillar in a parking garage more reliable than that of insiders like Kwiatowski, Robert Bowman, Von Bulow etc? And information delivered to a reporter with an intelligence background yet.
How romantic you are!
Alcibiades
5 years ago
Because it was true and because it led inexorably to the downfall of Richard Nixon. You may recall that an awful lot of people didn't believe the stories that Bernstein and Woodward were writing either in the early stages of Watergate and nobody suggested Nixon had been complicit in the deliberate deaths of almost 3000 American civilians.
As I said, when someone on the 'inside' and not just critics who were peripheral to the real decision making processes – guys like the former treasury secretary - comes out an starts talking I'll begin to believe you may have a point. Until then, I'll continue to criticize what I think is the worst US administration ever. I don't think they did this; what they did and are doing is in many ways just as bad but there is a big difference between capitalizing upon existing circumstances and events and 'creating' those circumstances and events yourself.
I'm not romantic at all.
The problem, if there is a problem, is that there are too many romantics on the other side of this equation. I'm a pragmatist, I want evidence and proof that will negate the knowledge I have and the things I understand - so far it hasn't happened.
You've already earned my respect - as I've written several times - you won't get my support without something a lot more persuasive than Griffin's lecture and the rest of a chain of conjecture.
Good wishes in any case.
Truman Green
5 years ago
Okay, thanks for joining in, Alcibiades. So lets go over your list one at a time.
Number 1. Planes were full of fuel. The Nist report admits that the fuel from the planes would have all been burned away within a few minutes. The longest estimate I've seen is 10 minutes. You'll have to go through the official reports to find it.
Any comment on number 1?
Your number 2 is just filler, so lets go to number 3.
You've totally underreported the structure of the two sets of perpendicular trusses, covered with lightweight concrete. The NIST claims that the columns were of heavy enough steel as to be considered redundant unless they were weakened by the fires.
4. This is just filler, too. You're referring to the fireguard attached to the structural components. The question is whether there was sufficient heat to weaken the columns, considering the conductivity of steel and whether the massive rectangular complement of steel, especially at the core would have been able to absort the fires that resulted from the impact, beyond the time frame of the burning off of the planes' fuel.
5. I haven't looked into this yet, but I will. All tall buildings have some movement. Can you supply me with a link which supports your theory that the movement of the building contributed to the collapse.
6.Number six is not true. Did you read t he NIST report. Engineers know what temperature steel weakens or melts at. Engineers know what temperatures would have been reached by the exploding fuel, namely because it is kerosene which always burns at the the same temperatures.
7.Your number seven says, "The buildings did collapse." I won't comment on that.
8.Your numbers 8 and 9 are more of your overal disbelieve and contribute exactly nothing to the discussion.
Nana
5 years ago
ALCI
Nova's answer to your question #5
So, whatever shock was delivered by the crashes, would have been taken care of by this shock absorbing system engineered to take wind gusts of 180mph.
No way would fireproofing have come off the beams.
Truman Green
5 years ago
Alcibiades, will you go to this link and get back to us. This is Brigham Young physics professor, Steven Jones esplaining why he doesn't accept the official explanations.
I know he's correct for one reason. I came up with the same conclusions before I heard about him.
As I've said time and again: The conductivity of the steel--from the crash site to the basement--would not allow the temperatures to be dragged down the building.
Jones has the same argument. He's a physics prof. with everything to lose.
To weaken those columns you have to draw a consistent complement of 800 degrees C down the column progressively with the smooth appearance of the collapse.
And if pancaking occurred each floor would have to absorb the energy transferred to it by the impact.
AND THIS WOULD TAKE TIME. 2nd law thermodynamics just doesn't allow for this. This is not what happens in nature.
With those kinds of weights and those kinds of heights it wouldn't be a lot of time, but it would be measureable.
http://physics911.net/stevenjones.htm
Truman Green
5 years ago
Many witnesses reported molten metal at ground zero. It was still red hot up to 21 days after the planes hit. The official reports admit that none of the fires were sufficient to melt steel beams.
What caused the steel to melt?
Truman Green
5 years ago
I find it unfortunate that you, Alcibiades, are able to accept the possibility that wtc7 was brought down by controlled demolition without understanding the implications of your speculation--regarding 1 and 2.
This kind of allowance is bizarre even if no physical collapse theories are considered.
I'd suggest you go over the "prosecutor's fallacy" and the Sally Clark criminal case, then go have a look at some 2nd law of thermodynamics theory.
Truman Green
5 years ago
Just a couple of more things.
This is what the FEMA report says about wtc7:
"The specifics of the fires in WTC7 and how they caused the building to collapse {official theory} remain unknown at this time. Although the total diesel fuel in the premises contained massive potential energy, the best hypothesis {fire/damage-caused collapse} has only a low probability of occurrence. Further research, investigation, and analysis ae needed to resolves this issue.
FEMA 2002
And unbelievably, the famous 911 commission did not even mention the fact that wtc7 had collapsed.
Honest! Check it out! If I'm wrong about this last claim regarding whether FEMA mentioned wtc7, I hope something will let me know.
If that doesn't throw up some red flags, nothing will, and this whole episode is now safely (for the perpetrators) in the realm of religion, that is to say, 'faith-based.'
Truman Green
5 years ago
Error above in sentence beginning, "Honest..."
I should have said that the 911 commission did not mention the collapse of wtc7.
FEMA mentioned it and I presented its conclusion.
Clear Cut
5 years ago
"I know he's correct for one reason. I came up with the same conclusions before I heard about him." - Truman Green
Logic meets modesty.
Working Man
5 years ago
I know that there is not point in doing this but here we go....
Twenty one day? I find that awfully hard to believe.
The melting point of steel is About 2500 degrees Farenheit. A typical house fire often hits 1700'F. Given the tens of thousands of gallon of jet few on each plane as well as the flammable nature of offices themselves, I do not think it would be much of a stretch to assumre that fire exceeded 2500 degrees F.
Then again, there is no point tryting to argure with a conspiracy theory nutjob.
Working Man
5 years ago
http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/0112/Eagar/Eagar-0112.html
This link proivdes some excellent information.
Truman Green
5 years ago
Clear Cut, I don't blame you for that comment. My comment does seem like a bit of narcissistic reasoning. I anticipated your comment.
I was merely commenting on the counter-intuitive developement of an actual physics professor coming up with the same specific details in his hypothesis.
Think about it...if you come up with a very irregular explanation of a very complicated problem, and you find that a highly trained professional comes to all of the same conclusions--with the same details--would you not think that there's a good chance that you're both correct?
Clear Cut
5 years ago
As Working man points out, that much jet fuel (kerosene) could have melted the steel. I know everytime I leave my kerosene heater on overnight, by the next morning it's nothing more than a puddle of molten steel.
Alcibiades
5 years ago
The damping system was retrofitted after the buildings were completed. As initially constructed the top floors moved so much in high winds that the occupants frequently got sick. The retrofitted system did reduce the amount of sway. I can remember seeing photos of the buildings during the final stage of construction which showed clearly exactly how transparent they were. The sun going up or coming down low in the sky penetrated the buildings almost as if they were not there in anything but a skeletal form.
Alcibiades
5 years ago
Truman,
I know we've been through this before. I acknowledge, with a high degree of skepticism, that WTC 7 could have been demolished in a controlled way by some 'authority'. Personally, I doubt it but I know so little about the chronology of events during the day that I'm prepared to accept the possibility. I have no idea how much structural damage 7 suffered incidental to the collapse of 1 & 2 and I doubt if there is much information available to anyone. Sept 11 was a busy day and the firefighting capacity of the NYFD was in a shambles. Water mains were broken, power was out, communication was down.
Everyone acknowledges that a building of 37 stories would take weeks to prepare it for a controlled demolition. I just don't see where anyone could have found the access and the time.
But, even so, if it was 'pulled' as you and Nana claim, how does that, other than being a great example of coincidence, have any bearing on the collapse of 1 & 2?
Alcibiades
5 years ago
As to the temperatures, the difficulty in replication arises from the combination of materials burning in such a wide variety of circumstances. One can mock up similar materials in the lab, but, the actual conditions in the towers that day, the role of wind, the chimney effects and the amount of other materials burning in conjunction with kerosene, paper, plastics and the like is, I'd assert, extremely difficult to study.
Alcibiades
5 years ago
C'mon Truman, you know better than that. I don't know, and neither do you or anyone else. As you yourself are fond of saying, this isn't a matter of religious faith - the fact you 'think' you understand the matter is perfectly fine. If you expect me to debate what you 'know' you're going to have to find another sucker my friend.
Nana
5 years ago
Oh Alci
What is that about retrofitting.?
You're making that up, my dear, but to what end? So you can then say the retrofitting caused a weakened building?
Here's the link
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/wtc/innovation.html
Nana
5 years ago
Working
HERE'S A LINK TO A 1/2 MINUTE VIDEO OF WORKING ON THE STLL HOT RUINS WEEKS LATER
http://www.911blogger.com/2005/12/steven-jones-research-paper-update.html
Working Man
5 years ago
Nana, since that linked to a 9-11 conspiracy site I am not going to hold it in much credendce. Surfing around I am surprised just how much of this non-sense there is.
Working Man
5 years ago
Oh, and Nana, the site you linked to has all kinds of nice merchanidse, too:
http://www.americanmethod.com/bumper.php
KitsCommuter
5 years ago
Been there done that Working Man. A more thorough analysis of Dr. Eagar's assertions can be found here.
http://911research.wtc7.net/disinfo/experts/articles/eagar_nova/nova_eagar1.html
and here
http://911research.wtc7.net/disinfo/experts/comments/eagar.html
and here's an excellent site that provides a very informative video. (911 Mysteries)
http://www.911weknow.com/
Truman Green
5 years ago
Alcibiades, I've never used the term, "pulled." That was Silverstein's famous comment, regarding wtc7.
What 37 story building are you talking about? WTC7 was 47 stories.
Also, if you google something like, "911 timeline," you can go over the entire day minute by minute.
I did.
I assume your kidding about the implications of a controlled demolition of wtc7 for the collapses of 1 and 2.
I mean, how smooth do you think the universe is, anyway?
Sincerely, in all of the reports and opinions I've read on this subject you're the only one I know who can accept that 7's collapse might have no relationshiop to the collapses of 1 and 2. If you can find a reference to this allowance, I'd appreciate it if you would let me know.
That's why the 911 commission didn't mention 7's collapse. It completely boggled their minds, and they understand the concept of acausal synchronicity.
No other steel highrise has ever collapsed due to fires. I already supplied evidence of this, and photos of steel buildings completely engulfed in flames that didn't collapse.
wtc7 was not hit by an airplane--which means that you have to subtract ALL of your explanations for collapse which have to do with a plane's impact FROM YOUR EXPLANATION OF WHY 7 COLLAPSED.
Unless, wtc7 came down as a result of the planes hitting 1 and 2, the second law of thermodynamics--as well as even modestly complemented human brains--will suggest that, if there was an identical collapse, there must be SOMETHING that the 3 collapses HAD IN COMMON.
Otherwise, it's acausal synchronicity.
Now, I happen to know that acausal synchronicity DOES happen in this universe, and most people just call it a coincidence.
But some coincidences challenge the imagination.
Nana
5 years ago
Alci
You can't plead ignorance now about WTC7, not after all the posting of info.
We've been over and over the fire temperatures never, ever being able to reach temperatures that could have done anything to the steel beams.
The results of your recently published metallurgical tests seem to clear things up (3), and support your team's August 2003 update as detailed by the Associated Press (4), in which you were ready to "rule out weak steel as a contributing factor in the collapse". The evaluation of paint deformation and spheroidization seem very straightforward, and you noted that the samples available were adequate for the investigation. Your comments suggest that the steel was probably exposed to temperatures of only about 500F (250C), which is what one might expect from a thermodynamic analysis of the situation.
However the summary of the new NIST report seems to ignore your findings, as it suggests that these low temperatures caused exposed bits of the building's steel core to "soften and buckle"(5). Additionally this summary states that the perimeter columns softened, yet your findings make clear that "most perimeter panels (157 of 160) saw no temperature above 250C". To soften steel for the purposes of forging, normally temperatures need to be above 1100C (6). However, this new summary report suggests that much lower temperatures were be able to not only soften the steel in a matter of minutes, but lead to rapid structural collapse.
This story just does not add up. If steel from those buildings did soften or melt, I'm sure we can all agree that this was certainly not due to jet fuel fires of any kind, let alone the briefly burning fires in those towers. That fact should be of great concern to all Americans. Alternatively, the contention that this steel did fail at temperatures around 250C suggests that the majority of deaths on 9/11 were due to a safety-related failure. That suggestion should be of great concern to my company.
http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20041112144051451